The Mason-Dixon poll has McCain up two in Ohio. And McCain’s performance on SNL was excellent. He played himself a lot better than Obama could ever play himself. (Imagine Barack being ironically self-deprecating while staying in character.) The idea of buying time of QVC--because that’s all he could afford--allowed for a lot of gentle, pointed shots at Obama, and Tina Fey was sort of subdued and almost ashamed in his presence. Her moment as the rogue Sarah was funny, though. So was the set of three "Joe dolls"--Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, and Joe Biden.
If you think you’re not psyched up enough to bother voting on the real election day, let the Sowell man speak to you.
UPDATE: There are now seven national polls up today, and McCain is down 6.4. If that is all the information we had, we’d have to say he still has a very outside chance of winning. Like Lucas in the thread, I can’t help but think in terms of Obama’s superior ground game, but it’s a McCain election-day surge is not inonceivable.
He played himself a lot better than Obama could ever play himself.
Hmmm . . . Yeah, I'm going to have to throw this statement into the "partisan nonsense" pile and credit it's appearance to the frenzy of election time.
Leave room for Lawler's claim that Tina Fey was "subdued and ashamed" in McCain's presence. That was as funny as some of her SNL lines.
In advance, I thought it was a terrible idea for McCain to do the SNL appearance and was prepared to cringe but I thought it was really funny and managed to make maudlin melodramatic Obama's own often ponderous manner (cf. righteous wind at his back). It reminded me of the two very different performances they put in at the White House Press Corps dinner--both very funny, admittedly, but Obama came across as much more self-conscious, without enough confidence to truly pull off self-irony. Even Mccain's attempts at humor reveal his greater seriousness.
Professor Lawler, this is a bit off topic, but I'm wondering what happened to one of your blog posts from this past Friday. I read a rather interesting (if somewhat rude) comment and was curious to see what your response would be, and then later when I checked back, I discovered the comment remained but the blog post that inspired it had vanished. Here's the comment to which I'm referring:
Comment by Bogdan Nowak
"It turns out white people like Obama because they’re afraid of being racist. But I would add: They love him because he looks black but is actually bourgeois bohemian. I would actually relish a black president who had some contempt for the obvious inauthenticity and self-indulgence of sophisticated white people these days." Or maybe the white people who like Obama like him because they simply ARE NOT racist, and they like his ideas, his approach to things, his demeanor, etc. Is the inverse of your offensive and dismissive proposition that the white people who DON'T like him (such as those seen in the YouTube videos of McCain and Palin rallies, like where Obama is mocked as an ape or a monkey) do not like him because they are unashamed and open about their racism (even if they might not like the term itself)??? "Looks black but is obviously bourgeois bohemian"? - Why does that sentence need to include a "but"? And I even question your assertion of what is obvious there. America's Christian conservatives who aren't racist (how many that is I don't know) have allowed themselves to be in a sad position where they must pray for the racists to get worked up enough that they'll vote for a white man they don't like. Utterly pathetic!
Can you shed any light on this?
Thanks, Chance
I was wondering the same thing.