This doesn't have much substance, but I thought it might amuse some people other than me. Today in my Greek class, one of my classmates pointed out that the Greek adverb Palin (pi alpha lambda iota nu in Greek) is an adverb meaning backwards. It also means again or once more. We all found this very amusing.

Let's put aside for a moment the charges of tokenism. Let's put aside the ties to the corrupt Alaska political machine. Let's even put aside the experience issue (frankly, I continue to believe that there is no set litmus test for presidential experience). So, putting aside all of those things, why do I think Palin was a bad choice for McCain?

Simple. She makes him look bad.

She is, to put it simply, more exciting than the top of the ticket. She has more energy, more character, and certainly seems to have more class and moral fortitude. I disagree with nearly all of her policy positions, but at least she, unlike McCain, genuinely seems to hold them. She is a fresh face in a time when that seems to be something that the American people want, and she has a reputation, deserved or not, for being a popular governor and a reformer. Honestly, if the suspected corruption doesn't turn anything up, she could have been a damn fine presidential candidate in four or eight more years. However, all of these things make her a terrible vice presidential nominee.

She reinforces every perception about him. She makes him look old, dull, unexciting. Some people on this site have commented that he looks like her father. I think that's being overly generous to Senator McCain. I just saw them together on an internet banner, and he looks like her grandfather. Rather than bringing change and outside-the-Beltway cred to the ticket, she just provides a contrast to McCain's lack of those things. When you put Obama and Biden together, they look like a team. You can sense the respect and camaraderie they share. Put Palin on a stage with McCain and they look like two people who've never been in the same room together. The pairing reeks of the politics of convenience.

So how do we counteract her? This is just my opinion, and I'm hardly a political operative or scholar of any kind. But what I feel will work is this: ignore her. Address her when you have to, but otherwise focus on McCain. He is the weaker side of the ticket, and we need to maximize the trouble he has tying himself to even his own vice presidential candidate. We need to emphasize the vast differences between the two of them. The image that the Obama campaign should be creating is of a strong, united ticket on one side and an uncomfortable union of political necessity on the other. The republicans have been trying to paint the Clintons as reluctant to embrace Obama; now it's our turn. Let's make it clear that McCain and Palin wouldn't have anything to do with one another if it weren't for the McCain camp's desperation. Let's show the media a real party in disunity.

There have been various (too many) (waaaaaaaaaay too many) diaries going around about whether or not the party is united and how the party can be united and whose job it is to unite the party. Given all this talk about party unity, it seemed to me high time to have a discussion of what a political party really is.
Sure, part of what a political party is is the machinery. The guts. The rules committees, the fund raising apparatus, the political consultants, the offices, things like that. And part of what it is is the politicians, in any political office state or federal. But to me, what the party is is us. We're the ones who make the party mean something. Without us, the machinery has no purpose. Without us, the politicians are out of a job.
So what exactly is it that makes us a political party? It's certainly not that we agree on everything. People on this site are constantly in disagreement, and yet at the end of the day are still able to shake hands and walk away as democrats. The party isn't monolithic, and frankly I'm glad of that. But we are still able to call ourselves a party, to unite despite our differences, and I think that is because the what brings us together as a party is the fact that we share hopes, values, dreams, ideas. We share a vision for what this country is and what it could be. We share bedrock ideals that we believe should be protected above all else: freedom, compassion, honesty, wisdom.

Look, y'all. I know how tempting it is to snark at the troll diaries. It's the first thing I did when I logged on this morning. But then I got to thinking, that's exactly why a crappy two-line diary is on the rec list today. The trolls count on our inability to just let their petty and illogical arguments go. I know I can't help but want to smack them down, and I don't think that's one of the better angels of my nature, right as we may be sometimes. That's exactly what feeds the beast.
We've got the DNC going on for the next few days. That means several things as far as this blog is concerned.

1. There is going to be all sorts of fascinating shit regarding our party going on that merits in-depth analysis and discussion

2. The trolls will be out in force, trying to sew division at every opportunity the convention gives them. This is a perfect chance for them to grab the spotlight and capitalize on our visceral gut responses to their behavior.

3. Our moderators will likely be busy actually covering the convention, and so will have to rely on us to police ourselves.

There are a lot of diaries on this site that focus on the results whatever the latest national tracking poll is. Some of these diaries actually contain analysis, and that's all well and good. But I just wanted to point out a couple things and maybe curtail these diaries from taking over the site entirely. First of all, Gallup, Rasmussen, all of these pollsters have website of their own at which this data is posted. It's also often reposted by an abundance of news outlets. So it's not like there's nowhere else people can discover this stuff. If you don't post it here it's not as if it's going to slip through the cracks, lost forever to the merciless currents of time.
Secondly, much of the analysis I see in these diaries consists of either "Obama's candidacy is doooooooomed!" if the numbers are down or "Clearly nothing can ever go wrong for us ever." if the numbers are up. If you're going to post about polls, try first of all to grasp that daily tracking polls tell us very little about the actual dynamics of the race. Analyze trends! Also, look at the methodology! Try to tell us something we don't know! Everyone knows that Obama being down is bad for Obama and Obama being up is good for Obama. But what does each poll tell us about how certain demographics are responding to him, or what parts of his message might be resonating or falling flat, or, god forbid, the results of the electoral college.
Which brings me to my final point. The electoral college. That nagging little thing that actually determines who wins. If you want to tell me that Obama is falling flat or that he is kicking ass and taking names, you'd best be bringing the electoral math. Right now I happen to believe he's doing that, because all the well-respected electoral-vote-calculatin' sites tell me so, and seeing as I'm not a statistician, I tend to trust them. If you've got data that says otherwise, I'd love to see it, but no more of this completely factless hemming and hawing about this national poll or that national poll. This election isn't decided in the polls, it's decided in the electoral college. So please. Don't diary unless you actually have something to say.