I’ve been looking to avoid this evening since I heard the veep nominations…

The expectations for Palin are so low, that if she strings two coherent sentences together she wins. If Biden crushes her, she wins. If the moderator asks her hard questions, she wins. If she shows up with a star-spangled swimsuit and poses with a gun, she wins.

To quote the pimply faced boy from the Simpsons: this is only going to end in tears.

7:33 PM To get warmed up, some favorite veep-debate quotes:
7:33 PM “Who am I? Why am I here? I’m not a politician…”
— Admiral James Stockdale
7:34 PM “I will never have another Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy Carter grain embargo.”
— Senator Dan Quayle
7:36 PM “George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.”
— Sen. Al Gore
9:01 PM Ahhh … back on PBS, but I am already missing that little audience response graph on CNN.
9:02 PM If you flip between CNN and PBS, CNN is on a 5 second tape delay. Are they expecting a wardrobe malfunction?
9:04 PM How come Joe in a black suit looks professional, but Sarah in a black suit looks like she is going to a funeral?
9:07 PM Well practiced responses from both candidates. Palin stumbled right out of the gate, but settled down quick.
9:12 PM Wow. I mean, like wow. Satan prepped this woman. She is on point, on message, and (like all good pols interacting with journalists) completely ignoring the question.
9:15 PM Joe’s gotta watch it … he’s going to come across as a inside-the-beltway wonk, and she is going to become the guardian of the people.
9:18 PM Satan, i tell you, Satan. Ham-fisted (barking at Gwen where there is nothing to bark about) but is going to do great for the anti-PBS vote.
9:20 PM She’s stumbling just enough to increase her foloksy cred, but not enough to embarass herself.
9:22 PM Flip over to CNN. Human’s are perverts. I can understand the audience response for men jumping when she speaks, but the audience response for women jumping when *he* speaks?
9:26 PM Oh. Need something to distract me.
9:28 PM How is she being allowed to successfully stake out their ticket as the one of change? Joe’s got to step up his game …
9:33 PM Am i the only one who is a little disappointed that she didn’t say that Climate Change is just God hugging us closer?
9:39 PM Oh, my. She just used tolerance as a reason to be intolerant. Artful.
9:44 PM She just paused about 5 seconds before responding to a question about Iraq, and you could actually see her sifting through the mental file folders / media training looking for the appropriate canned response…
9:45 PM When, exactly, is she going to start drooling again?
9:49 PM I think she wants to sleep with Petraeus, too. What is the deal?!?
9:55 PM Joe Biden shouldn’t talk about Joe Biden in the third person …
9:57 PM Is anybody buying Sarah Palin as the harbinger of change? The Dems are “spending too much time pointing backwards” to convince Palin that they are going to move us forward. Ouch.
10:00 PM I want to live in the parallel universe that she’s living in.
10:06 PM I never thought in a million years that Palin would be the one who would need to watch coming off as being condescending.
10:07 PM SOMEONE BRING ME A DRINK!
10:09 PM “a team of mavericks.”
10:15 PM This folksy thing is at the point where it’s just making me mad … literally, and certifiably, angry. You, betcha!
10:17 PM Does Cheney have a doctrine now? And is she actually supporting it? How in God’s name does she think that a more active role for the veep will get her ticket elected.
10:22 PM Sarah Palin: the candidate of change and tolerance. Doublethink. Blackwhite. She must be a closet fan of Orwell.
10:35 PM thank god that’s over.
10:36 PM observation number one: this answers the question about whether she can be properly media trained, not about whether she can be a chief executive.
10:37 PM observation number two: mark shields called her “relentlessly colloquial” and i think that hits the nail on the head. the open question is whether or not the people want that right now, after 8 years of someone who couldn’t pronounce “nuclear.”
10:41 PM observation number three: she threw the bush administration under the bus. i know that it won’t be remembered in 50 years, but if bush is expecting a positive legacy … oiff.
10:52 PM that’s it. i’m done. good night, kids …

a couple more thoughts after the debate … it’s fascinating the sea change we have seen in regards to women and their roll in society. i’m sincerely happy that a woman can go into a veep debate with a folksy, soccer mom schtick and hold her own against opposition in a power suit.

let’s be honest, if geraldine ferraro went for this approach 24 years ago, she would have been run off the ticket on a rail.

to me, this election was all fun and games until tonight. honestly, i suspect i could live under a McCain administration … even if i would prefer pre-2001 as opposed to this particular incarnation. but, imho, the country just can’t survive even two years of a Palin administration.

the way she looks down on intellect, forces herself to be colloquial, follows her politico-driven script, her obviously ultra-conservative credentials … that’s just a continuation of the bush approach which has proven bankrupt.

that’s it for me. i’m (right now) going to go donate a lot of money to the Obama campaign, and go to bed to get the nightmares over with.