ej: I respect Jeralyn’s decision at TalkLeft to forbid discussion of Palin’s private life, and I wish more blogs would follow her lead. I don’t get why you think that’s bad. However, she clearly thinks that Palin’s candidacy is a joke, whereas the other major contributor, Big Tent Democrat, agrees with me as to how to approach Palin, and ze’s been critical of the panty-sniffing slut-shaming all along…

Once again, we see the happy accident that the Palin nomination not only makes a key element of the Republican base happy, but it sets Democrats at each other’s throats!

I don’t mean to triangulate between you and ej, but yes, your points exactly.

The question of how to vote is an interesting one, because your counterparts on the right, the hard-right social conservatives, have the same problem of being ignored by the Republican party.

I say this with no pleasure, but the Religious Right, despite no where else to go, remains a powerful force in the conservative movement. Not overwhelming, but at least relevant. How? Recall the Bush 2000 campaign – he didn’t pay much attention to the religious base at all. They didn’t turn out, and (let’s not get into details) barely, somehow, won. He and Karl Rove didn’t forget that. Contrast that with Bush 2004. Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage! Outrageous, IMHO. 2004, he won, and not by a little.

McCain, by sheer dumb luck, won the primary this year. He first won in NH, where he’s always been strong. (My grandmother lives there, and calls him John. “John’s coming this weekend to speak at the library.” Go figure.) He won in a field of five in South Carolina. Dumb luck. By virtue of winning two in a row, he became the front-runner from a field of lookalikes, and won Super Tuesday.

I was happy, but the religious base wasn’t. They didn’t give him money, didn’t volunteer for his rallies, didn’t show support in any way. His approval among conservatives was 60~70%. He knew he had to do something, and he picked Palin. Witness the roar. 7 million USD in donations.

Somehow, the Religious Right has been able to punish the Republican party without seriously hurting them. Nobody is stupid, and bluffs don’t work. They weren’t bluffing, they were actually willing to let Gore-Lieberman win. It was a near-death experience for the Bush team, and they never forgot it.

BTW, I find your sex(gender?)-neutral personal pronouns interesting, I never seen those before. In what fields are they commonly used, if any?

Ej:

Fair enough – a more fact-based, less-sensational media – I’ll drink to that!

I guess its up to us to muddle through…

Well, this is a tough topic to broach, since we are obviously on different sides. I am confusing the media, the Obama campaign, and Obama supporters to some degree, I admit.

Let me put it this way. I perceive a liberal media bias, although the media can certainly unfairly portray Democrats. The Clinton sex scandals, for example, where the media and the Republicans were both atrocious. But when even Bill Maher is embarrassed by the media coverage of Obama, that is saying something.

As I state previously, I believe this media coverage affects the way the Obama campaign acts. And I believe this encourages this juvenile/arrogant behavior, for the reasons stated previously.

And certainly, some of Obama’s supporters, taking their cue from the media and the campaign, have proceeded to attack Clinton and now McCain/Palin with wanton abandon. I apologize if I had previously implied or given the impression that I meant all Obama supporters.

The three elements (media, campaign, supporters) are linked and I am criticizing the behavior of all three. The only reason I am expending energy criticizing them is because I am seeking to explain the strategy behind the Palin pick as I see it. This is an academic endeavor for me – I’m not looking for converts here.

Like it or not, this behavior affects the way people see the candidate. (Remember how most of us on the left reacted to the knee-jerk jingoism, chest-thumping, and triumphalilsm of Bush partisans back in 2002-03, when our splendid little wars looked like they were going well?) Many people–some of them lifelong Dems who have been active in the party–are really stunned and don’t know how they’ll vote yet, because they don’t want to be affiliated with jerks and they don’t want to reward jerky behavior.

And, the SCLM aren’t liberal, although the cheerleading for Obama by everyone over at MiSogNyBC has been undeniable (by everyone but Joe Scarborough).

Hubris is an attitude Dems should steer clear of.

There have actually recently been some studies done about the Media’s treatment of both candidates-the one at George Mason comes to mind. Not surprisingly, Obama has received a disproportionate share of the coverage. Perhaps surprisingly, an equally large percentage has been negative.

I think if you read anything from the campaign (which cannot be automatically conflated with the “liberal media’) you will see a lot of complaints about their treatment in the media. I don’t think they consider them their friends, but rather much more critical of Obama than then are of McCain.

Perhaps my key point here is that the media generally described, including liberal blogs, is not the same as the campaign. The campaign often takes very different positions.