Bring on the sexism! It’s been at least a day or two since we’ve seen it.

1) The resurfacing of the Bill Ayers story continues to gain traction. Today’s WSJ found at memeorandum has a piece calling for Obama to come clean.

Obama aides believe John Kerry lost in 2004 because he failed to respond to the “Swift Boat” ads attacking him, and they are lashing out. Sometimes the Obama objections have merit, as when they exposed errors in Jerome Corsi’s sensationalized Obama biography. But sometimes they are designed to shut down legitimate questions. “They’re terrified of people poking around Obama’s life,” one reporter told Gabriel Sherman at the New Republic. “The whole Obama narrative is built around the narrative that Obama and [campaign strategist] David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it’s not entirely true.” The stakes are high. If the full story of Mr. Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright had been revealed before the Iowa caucus, he wouldn’t have won.

Aides claim Mr. Obama “has taken voluntary transparency steps” that allow “his constituents, the media and his political opponents to fully examine him.” In reality, anyone questioning the approved story line is liable to be ignored, misled or even bullied. This isn’t what reporters expected when Mr. Obama began campaigning for a “new politics” that would bring honesty and openness to government.

Read the rest ->

Walking the rows of media outlets at the Denver convention, I had no trouble finding reporters who complained the campaign was secretive and evasive. Ben Smith of Politico.com has written about Team Obama’s “pattern of rarely volunteering information or documents, even when relatively innocuous.” Politico asked months ago if Mr. Obama had ever written anything for the Harvard Law Review as a student. The Obama campaign responded narrowly, with a Clintonesque statement that “as the president of the Law Review, Obama didn’t write articles, he edited and reviewed them.” This month it turned out Mr. Obama had written an article — but it was published a month before he became president.

The author then details the lack of transparency in a variety of areas and how the Obama campaign has withheld information and the paper trail.

No offense, MSM, but this story has been around for a long time. Y’all need to do some serious catch-up. Oh, and BTW, please STICK WITH IT. Sheeeeesh.

2) CNN Political Ticker has the congratulations to Sarah Palin from none other than Hillary Clinton.

“We should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin’s historic nomination, and I congratulate her and Senator McCain,” Clinton, the first woman to win a presidential primary, said in the statement. “While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, Governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate.”

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Clinton’s statement reacting to Palin is markedly different than the Obama campaign’s initial reaction which made no mention of the historic nature of the Alaska Republican’s VP candidacy — instead painting her as woefully inexperienced to be commander-in-chief. The Obama campaign later released a joint statement from both the Illinois senator and his running mate, Joe Biden, praising Palin for making history.

It remains unclear just how many former Clinton supporters Palin may attract, but California Sen. Barbara Boxer said Friday that McCain is “badly mistaken” if he expects backers of the New York senator to break ranks with the Democratic party because of Palin.

The speed and derisive attitude from the Democrats is certainly worth noting. No classy congratulations but a quick response belittling small towns (where the old, bitter and gun clingers live, I guess) and those with “no foreign policy experience.” Wait, what was that last one again?

3) Looks like sexism is baaaaaack!!! MediaMatters already has a story on the sexist response to Palin’s selection as McCain’s VP.

During the August 29 edition of CNN Newsroom, CNN anchor John Roberts said to congressional correspondent Dana Bash: “There’s also this issue that, on April 18, she [Palin] gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. The baby is just slightly more than 4 months old now. Children with Down syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of vice president, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?” Bash replied: “That’s a very good question, and, I guess — my guess is that perhaps the line inside the McCain campaign would be, if it were a man being picked who also had a baby, but, you know, four months ago with Down syndrome, would you ask the same question?”
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BASH: That’s a very good question, and, I guess — my guess is that perhaps the line inside the McCain campaign would be, if it were a man being picked who also had a baby, but, you know, four months ago with Down syndrome, would you ask the same question? And that might be another way to kind of, you know, kind of close the gender gap in trying to make the point that, yes, she not only has, unfortunately, a baby with Down syndrome, but she has five children, the oldest of whom, is apparently going — is in the Army and is apparently going to head off to Iraq in the fall.

I happen to think any child is a gift – even mine – and not an “unfortunate” part of life. This conversation is so offensive on so many levels, I’ll leave it to the comments.

4) TNR, at memeorandum, doesn’t like the Palin pick. But I find a problem with its argument.

. . .Obama recognizes the greatness and uniqueness of the United States, but he does not translate that exceptionalism into dominance or isolationism as conservatives often have. Instead, he sees it as the basis for U.S. leadership. He has laid out that worldview in myriad speeches and articles, and he has surrounded himself with pragmatists who have a record of translating that understanding of America’s role into concrete gains for our national security. By contrast, there is no indication that Palin has even shades of a foreign policy worldview; a Nexis search doesn’t turn up a single article that she has written on international affairs.

I think all the McCain folks need to do is ask the Obama campaign to please produce all the paper associated with Obama’s “world view” or anything else. As outlined above, the Obama campaign seems strongly averse to producing anything Obama has written or any paper associated with him at all. Nexis search, indeed.

5) The NYPost has a column outlining obvious objections to the lines of attack from Democrats about Sarah Palin.

The writer wonders if this selection will draw the Obama campaign back into the misogyny trap or the experience trap. Either way, they won’t look good. The writer also talked with Geraldine Ferraro.

Ferraro told me she’s excited for another woman to be on a presidential ticket. She sees Palin as a risky choice – but also dismissed the idea that she’s unqualified.

And she rejected the idea that all the so-called “Hillary voters” would be repelled by Palin’s staunch anti-abortion views. These voters know the Senate will have a veto-proof Democratic majority, so that lessens the potency of that issue.

The Democrats continue to forget that: women are not single-issue voters, the VP pick doesn’t matter much, and we expect a Democratic majority in Congress. While they assume women will still believe the pro-choice / life fight exists at the executive level, many women are looking to shift that to Congress.

6) Realclearpolitics, has another critique of the Obama speech on Thursday. I had seen people say that the speech was not “all that” but the spectacle of it was. In this peice, the author asserts that Obama has transformed from an exciting, different candidate into just another Democratic politician.

In tone, Obama’s big speech was small, partisan, often defensive and occasionally snide. “I’ve got news for you John McCain,” he exclaimed. “We all put our country first.” It was a pattern for the night: I’m not weak — you are the one who hasn’t killed bin Laden with your bare hands. I’m not inexperienced — you are the one who is old and out of touch. None of this assault was made with grace or wit.

And some of the attacks were simply unfair. Is it really credible to blame McCain for a tripling of oil imports during his time as senator? What does it mean that McCain “won’t even follow (bin Laden) to the cave where he lives”? That McCain is cowardly? That he knows where bin Laden hides, and won’t tell the rest of us? That he doesn’t believe in fighting al-Qaeda?

When I heard the line about “follow (bin Laden) to the cave where he lives” I thought it made no sense at all. Besides, Obama hasn’t been looking in any caves either. WTH?

7) Over at Salon, there is an interesting piece about how the selection of Palin plays into the likely campaign dynamics.

During her speech, Palin gave a shout-out to Geraldine Ferraro and cited Clinton’s rallying cry about the 18 million voters who cracked the White House glass ceiling, chillingly promising to break it for her. It was hard not to consider that if elected, Palin will be one health emergency away from becoming our first female president, and to feel frustration at Democrats not only for letting this particular piece of history slip through their fingers but for allowing the work that Clinton and her supporters did to get co-opted by their Republican opponents. If the Palin selection brings female voters to the McCain camp, there is likely to be a round of second-guessing about whether Obama read the tea leaves wrong and missed an opportunity to shore up his divided party more effectively by going with, or at least seriously considering, Clinton.

Palin’s spot on the ticket will also mean the diffusion of feminist energy. Those who monitor gender bias in popular culture and the media are still icing their heads after the exhausting season of Clinton-baiting by the press, and (too) slowly rousting themselves to take on the ugly treatment of Michelle Obama. Now there will also be Sarah Palin to consider, a candidate who represents none of what they believe in, but whose nomination is already highlighting the fact that the Clinton candidacy apparently taught the news media nothing.

Kind of interesting and slightly different than most of the stuff out there so far.

8 ) The WaPo has an article about the how both campaigns are going to be courting the “female vote.” While some are happy, NARAL, Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood and Senator Boxer are not.

“It’s basically the equivalent of a midnight raid behind enemy lines,” said Juleanna R. Glover, a GOP strategist with ties to the McCain campaign. “Hillary said she made 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling. Well, McCain just shattered it.”
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Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s former communications director, said Palin could peel away some votes from Obama and Biden. “Both campaigns seemed to have decided that Hillary Clinton’s 18 million voters represent a key swing bloc in this election — both Barack Obama’s speech and John McCain’s pick were at least partially aimed at them,” Wolfson said in an e-mail. “The fact that Palin is pro-life and pro-gun will be a block for many of Senator Clinton’s supporters — but not all. And it will raise the question for many why Senator Obama didn’t pick Senator Clinton as his running mate.”
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For one former Clinton supporter at least, the message hit home, and she said she will be voting for McCain. Sherry Morrison, 46, a medical billing executive who lives in Roanoke, called Palin’s speech “a wink and a nod to the Hillary supporters. It was, ‘Hey, if the Democrats are too stupid to break that glass ceiling, we will do it for them.’ ”

All good points. But as people have said time and again, the VP picks don’t determine how the voting will go. It’s the top of the ticket. And that’s still John McCain and Barack Obama.