[Rhodes22-list] Politics - Meet the Press

[Brad Haslett]

Sarah Palin may single-handedly drag John McCain's sorry ass across
the finish line.  She's been drawing 20,000+ at almost every
appearance.  In the past few days, she's taken a "screw the handlers
from the McCain campaign" attitude and started deviating from the
script. Keep trash talking her you detractors, you can "cool your
jets" in the dustbin of history with the rest of the "good 'ole' boys"
who underestimated her in Alaska.

First, there's this from the LA Times - (I'll attach the article as well)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/sarah-palin-b-3.html

Then there's gaffe-a-minute Botoxin Joe (the guy can't even wrinkle
his forehead when he's pissed anymore). Now the Obama campaign is
keeping Joe away from the microphones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X346U109Chs

You go Girl!

Brad

----------------------

s it possible we've been living in a bubble for the last several
weeks, not noticing a complete role reversal between the Democratic
vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, and his Republican
counterpart, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska?

The always astute Jake Tapper over at ABC makes a shocking point:

Now, Palin, who was once so sequestered from the media it allowed her
opponents to caricature her and helped create "Free Sarah Palin"
buttons, is meeting with more and more national reporters and,
unreported by them, numerous local media types at virtually every
campaign stop.

Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin
and Democratic Senator and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden of
Delaware

There's an interview with the Chicago Tribune today, reported here in
The Ticket and on CNN earlier this week. She walks back and chats with
reporters on her campaign plane.

And, contrary to the silent fears of the McCain controllers, she's
doing just fine.

But Biden is something else entirely. We've got Joe the Plumber and
Joe Six-Pack. But Joe Delaware-by-way-of-Scranton has gone missing.

Obama officials will deny it. But he's clearly been muzzled by the
Democratic campaign that's for real change.

The old veteran, who's been in the Senate since Obama was a kid and
was hired as No. 2 for the foreign affairs cover he gives the freshman
Illinois senator, has put his foot in his Delaware mouth a few too
many times for the Windy City campaign chieftains.

Tapper points out, amazingly, that Biden has not taken questions from
his crowds of supporters since Sept. 10. That's before some of us
learned Tampa Bay has a baseball team.

That date just happens to be when, you may recall (but here's the
Ticket item to refresh your memory) Biden so famously ruminated aloud
on-stage that Hillary Clinton might have made a better VP pick than
him. (See and watch the curious video by clicking on the "Read more"
line below.)

Something Palin promptly agreed on with him.

But that's not what the cocky White Sox fan wanted to hear, in part
because in terms of....

...Democratic votes anyway, Biden's probably right. Look how well he
did during the Democratic primaries. Sure wasn't an 18
million-vote-getter.

And Biden has not held a press availability since Sept. 7, three days
before that gaffe, on his plane en route to Big Sky Country.

That means for almost seven of the eight weeks between the Republican
convention and the Nov. 4 election Biden's been gagged to the media.
How much of a plus can this guy be to the over-funded Obama campaign
if he's forbidden from chatting up even his own media crowd?

And if he's so ready to become president in a skipped heartbeat, what
conceivable crowd questions are so scary they've, in effect, been
forbidden? Besides "Do you think Hillary Clinton should have won?"

Politicians don't usually go missing like that until after they've
become vice presidents.

Even Ron Paul and Countrywide Dodd from Connecticut took more questions.

But Biden still manages to get in verbal trouble, even when he's
talking in supposedly closed fundraisers. (Hello, presidential
campaign whose candidate described bitter small-town people clinging
to faith and guns to just such a crowd himself at considerable cost to
him in Pennsylvania.)

Biden in Seattle last weekend predicted -- guaranteed -- that
America's enemies would test this recent former state senator within
six months of Inauguration Day. A valid, historically accurate point
that Palin, John McCain and their surrogates are only too happy to
repeat to crowd after crowd.

Tapper notes, fairly, that a Biden spokesman (is that job really
necessary under the circumstances?) disagrees with that assessment.
But then the political veteran adds: "in terms of general availability
to their traveling press corps, Biden's and Palin's roles are
switching."

Does anybody seriously think that if the trend was going the other
way, we would not have heard by now endless accounts of her hiding?

-- Andrew Malcolm