Hockey Moms vs. Soccer Moms

Hockey moms drive 4wd's.

soccer moms drive volvo's

No contest really

I think a hockey mom is supposed to be a soccer mom/ Nascar dad hybrid. Less elitist, ya know. More rough 'n' tough 'n' NRA.

So I think that's the point, more than demographics per se. (I have little doubt that there are more soccer moms out there. I guess I am one.)

**********

Just read the article -- interesting that hockey is actually the more expensive sport.

damn clusters.

hadn't seen dadpad's post, he makes a similar point tho.

forget Hockey and Soccer, now it's

http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/50277/

from the middle of the piece



at the end



good stuff outside of the snips as well

I agree to an extent, but with a different slant. The McCain people, by picking her, have given Obama more gravitas. He had all the rest of it already. (Star power, charisma, ideas, etc.) His "tissue-thin" resume becomes encyclopedia-sized by comparison with hers. (He's done a whole lot, and a whole lot more on the national/ international scale than she has.)

He owns "change" this election. (Recent polls show he still does, well after the Palin pick.) So if he's "change" plus "gravitas," and "capable," groovy.

I hope you're right, but I'm certainly not feeling it.

Longer post on these ideas (especially, how Palin makes the McCain ticket less "safe") here :

http://able2know.org/topic/110334-34#post-3407541

I think she's right in that it really took the edge off the best attack they had on Obama (not ready) but to me that ignores the much bigger change, which is to infuse the Republican ticket with excitement and buzz.

I'd say that in the balance the buzz generated for the Republicans put them back in the game, and making Obama look a bit more experienced by comparison doesn't make up for tipping the scales in press coverage.

Experience is mainly something used to attack people in politics, not what people are going to vote for. Palin brings a lot of single issue people to the table and is able to generate a lot of buzz that will motivate more of them to vote for the Republican ticket.

No matter how you think the comparison stacks up I think it's very hard to say that Palin did not dramatically improve the Republican ticket from a strategic perspective.

Obama wasn't running on novelty alone, but the novelty was a big part of the excitement. Taking off a lot of the novelty edge for him was worth it to the Republicans even if it took away some of their ability to attack him for his experience.

Palin was brilliant short-term. Totally swamped DNC coverage, and brought a whole lot of excitement to the RNC and the campaign in general.

But that's short-term. I think that longer-term (and this has already started) she'll prove to be a liability.

It's not just that she makes Obama look safer/ better in comparison. It's (among other things) also that McCain was a bit of a Rorscharch (sp) blot before the pick -- winking and nodding at the religious conservatives and the moderates, making each group think he was actually one of them, and not actually part of the OTHER group. The Palin pick energized a lot of the religious conservative base -- and that's significant -- but McCain is shedding more moderate supporters left and right. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly has something called the "Enough Club;" people who were former McCain supporters and are now fed up.

Not just by the Palin decision in and of itself, but the cynicism and ineptitude it displays. (If you're going to pick her, at least vet her first. If you were going to pick her without vetting her, at least pretend that you think she's qualified instead of shielding her from the press. Etc.)

Especially, the media were major wink and nod recipients and now they are figuring out oh crap, he's really not who we thought he was. This translates into coverage which translates into popular perception of McCain and Palin.

I really think that from now on there will be occasional upswells as she has cause to act plucky and besieged, but overall she's not going to help McCain.

I think McCain is strategically right to court the right of his base and not count on "moderates". Sure you get a lot of these people claiming McCain is "losing" them but they weren't going to vote for McCain anyway.

Courting the right and making it a culture war was the only chance McCain had and Palin will certainly see increasing disapproval ratings between now and the election but that's going to be mainly because she has become a lightning rod for leftists. That kind of thing is going to help their ticket and "moderates" aren't going to make a difference in this election. People who think they are "moderate" are usually just partisan hacks who want to see themselves as thoughtful. Real moderates tend to be people who just don't care that much about politics and they aren't going to make the difference here. Obama excited the left and now Palin the right. The buzz will die down just like it did for Obama but she's still bringing many more righties to the table than she is causing their ticket to "lose" moderates. The "Enough Club" is a perfect example. A bunch of lifelong lefties like Michael Kinsley who were never ever going to vote for McCain claiming he's "lost" them. Not their votes mind you, just their respect. Well that's a lot of hot air, they were going to vote for Obama anyway.

Here's proof of what I am talking about. The founding member of the "Enough Club" had no intention of voting McCain:

In February he wrote:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1713490,00.html

Ok, so he claims he liked McCain but was surely going to vote against him. Then he says he no longer holds McCain in esteem and this is supposed to constitute moderates that McCain is "losing"? This is just hot air from people who have never crossed party lines and weren't about to start.

No, I mean like David Frum (former Bush speechwriter, conservative):

http://www.nationalpost.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=756704

(He's gotten more upset with McCain since then, just the first thing I found.)

Ramesh Ponnaru:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWY0YmM3N2JhMTVkYmI0ZjU0OTBiYTY3NmUyMjgxNTc

David Brooks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16brooks.html

The New York Times editorial board, which endorsed McCain and Hillary (not Obama) in the primaries:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12fri3.html

(By the way, I was wrong, it was Kevin Drum that came up with that term, not Steve Benen.)

This is what polls are indicating, too. Palin is helping with core people (who are after all core) but not with independents et al. Obama has just tied the highest lead in Gallup that he's ever had. Etc.

Some gains, some losses, and overall not helping.

from page 7 of The Sixty-Day War

David Frum's been hopping around his home town (Toronto) muttering about McCain for quite a while now. He seems to find it painful to say anything civil about McCain.

Yep, they're definitely trying to restart the culture wars, I agree with that.

Will it work, though?

We're not still talking about Obama as an abstract possibility like we were when I started my Obama '08? thread. He's already gotten through a very long and very difficult primary, where a lot of these issues were already dealt with. (I remember after the NH loss, reading that maybe this was the best thing that could've happened to Obama -- make him WORK for the nomination, and then carry the benefits of a long tough slog into the general election.)

And of course Andrew Sullivan:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/scales-eyes-mcc.html

I've been reading him daily since January or so I think. He really wanted McCain and Obama to win their respective primaries. He liked both of them and thought a campaign between them would be a great one. He's been pretty positive about Obama for a while but it wasn't at all obvious who he'd vote for. He doesn't like Obama's more liberal positions (especially economically-speaking) and has just *liked* McCain, the whole maverick/ straight-talk persona.

He has been absolutely appalled ever since the Palin pick. I'm not sure if he's said so in so many words but he's generally made it clear that while he wasn't sure who he'd vote for up until then (actually I think he's a British citizen and can't vote -- not sure) he is now actively opposed to a McCain/ Palin ticket.

Counting on a huge turnout from the right just isn't going to work. They shot that bolt with all of the anti-gay marriage ammendments the last two elections.

And I don't think moderate undecideds are people who don't care; if they didn't care they wouldn't vote. I think they're more people who don't worry about it until they have to make a decision. It's at that decision moment that all of the half-formed impressions have to come together.

He's had a bone to pick with McCain for over 6 years now and I don't think you can chalk this one up to Palin. The only thing I found in a quick search to back this up was a video from February, where he says that John McCain doesn't love the Republican party and that his method is to say that Republicans are "racist and wrong and stupid for thinking the way they do" and claims that "he's not interested in the project of saving conservatism in the Republican party, he's trying to build a movement with the Republican party as his personal vehicle".



Ponnaru endorsed McCain as what he thought was the strongest candidate of the Republican pack but said that since the endorsement McCain alienated Republican conservatives and that he should limit himself to one term. He started turning this corner way back in 2007.



David Brooks goes back and forth between being liberal or conservative and breaks with his currently professed party often. He criticizes Reagan and Goldwater and while I do think this is an example of a professed "moderate" no longer liking McCain he's been turning left for the last few years now (no cite, just my impression from reading him over the years) and was arguing against parts of the Republican party platform last election.

This is as close to being swayed by Palin as I can see so far, but from what I know of him he was ready to break with the Republican party as long as it didn't play to the center because he's not been happy with the Bush administration at all. He used to want a cross party ticket and I think as McCain lost the "maverick" label his luster to Brooks would have faded anyway because he wants a candidate as politically conflicted as he is.

Palin may well be the final straw in his case, but I wouldn't have bet on him voting Republican this election even without Palin.



These guys were not going to vote McCain. This is the same board that endorsed him and then implied that he'd been cheating on his wife. I haven't visited your link because I think it's the one I remember well where they level some very good criticism against McCain that I agree with. But it's certainly not an example of him losing any votes. They endorsed McCain as the Republican candidate but I would bet good money that the overwhelming majority of the board would not have voted for him. This is what I mean where he's getting additional criticism from people who may have once liked him but who weren't going to vote for him.



Yeah but he wasn't making a list of people who were going to vote McCain, his qualification was "if they sort of liked McCain in the first place" and his examples were:
Kinsley - I've already quoted him saying he had no intention of voting McCain long before Palin.
Friedman - he's one of my favorite liberals and I read him a lot and would have bet every dollar I had that he'd not vote Republican this year regardless of Palin
Mallaby - in June he claimed that "The real pro-growth candidate in this campaign looks to be Barack Obama" and while he claims he lost respect for McCain due to his "Palinization" he was clearly tilting toward Obama much earlier.
Joe Klein - This guy called Bush "clearly unfit to lead" in 2007 and has been criticizing McCain for his Iraq position for a long time. This is not a vote lost for McCain because of Palin either.
E. J. Dionne - Another lifelong liberal who wrote a book titled "Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era". This guy wasn't going to vote for McCain.
Ruth Marcus - Her column biography says she leans left. I don't know her too well but I suspect this isn't a lost vote either.
Mark Halperin - I'm not sure who he would have voted for, but I do know that this is the guy that the right tried to use as an example of leftist bias in the media when he was at ABC. I'm not sure this is much of a loss either.
Bob Herbert - He has said that "Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people" and this guy wasn't going to vote Republican either.

So the "Enough Club" is basically what I said it was, liberal or left-leaning columnists who probably weren't going to vote for McCain just saying they now like him even less.

That's not news and this time of year everyone who's picked a side likes the other side less.



I don't read either the literal data of the poll or the interpretation of the poll the way you do then. Because on the literal front I him leading by 6 at the most after the Palin/RNC bump and by as much as 8 in the days immediately before the Palin/RNC bump.



As to Palin not helping with "independents" I'd agree but have been contending that independents are overrated. They aren't what McCain needs in this election cycle because he's on the wrong side of where they are going to lean anyway. After the Bush administration people who were in the middle aren't leaning right. McCain shouldn't abandon the Republican's base to try to court them.



The polls may not show that it's working well enough to beat Obama but I don't think the polls show that this wasn't the only shot McCain had or that it's not helping. Despite a much weaker convention they got a bigger bounce that I ascribe to Palin. Sure that's subsided but Palin's also gone into hiding (because she's a liability on the trail and needs to stretch the novelty for later in the campaign) and McCain's bungled ads pretty hard and the economy fears got a lot worse (which helps Obama as he's seen as the stronger candidate for the economy in national polling).

I don't think there's anything in the poll data so far that suggests that Palin was a bad strategic pick for McCain. Perhaps just that it wasn't enough but I think if the data is showing anything it's that Palin gave the campaign new wings. I think the "too far" McCain ads and Wall Street are the biggest reasons that Obama's back in the lead and think that without Palin he would be pulling away into an even larger lead.

I don't think it will work well enough to win the election, but it will work a lot better than trying to court the middle from the right when the whole board is tilting left. At least gravity is on his side when he appeals to the right from the right-center.