David McReynolds
LEFT LETTERS

3 October 2008

Scoring the debate, the race

David McReynolds was on the staff of the War Resisters League for many years, and, as the Socialist Party candidate in 1980 and 2000, the first openly gay person to run for the U.S. presidency. He lives with two cats on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

This is, of course, my own position, modified by discussions with friends who joined me for watching tonight. I trust my own judgement in these matters and was surprised after the first Presidential Debate that it took the media several days to realize Obama had, for better or worse, come off the clear winner. Not by a huge margin, but he won it. McCain didn't look directly at the viewer, he was angry, Obama was calm, cool, and he clearly won.

Tonight was more interesting. The test was whether Sarah Palin could put together a coherent sentence. It turns out she can! No often, but she could do it. She was also stuffed with cliches which could be trotted out when she was stuck.

Lets' face it, her base will have loved her presentation, folksy and different, sweet and sincere (her voice grates on me but that is my fault). So, "by surviving she wins". The McCain campaign has brief new energy. Palin doesn't have to go back to Alaska.

However, Biden clearly, totally, won the debate. Republicans could breath a sigh of relief that Palin got to the end without tripping, but face it, a sigh of relief is not a sign of victory.

What struck me as most remarkable (and this is a brief note in what turns out to be such a brief column it should be a blog) is that in my 78 years I have never once seen a Presidential Race where the VP candidate so totally outshone the Presidental candidate of the same party.

This is not actually healthy for the McCain campaign. It is abundantly clear she isn't ready to take over from a dead McCain. She is on the ticket largely by accident, one of McCain's wild gambles. It was fine for her to bring excitement, but not so fine that the excitement she brings has folks paying much more attention to her than to him.


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