Video: McCain’s and Palin’s first joint town hall

I was curious to see it so I figure you’re curious to see it. The clip picks up with a PUMA showing her love and runs for eight minutes, with the question about her perceived lack of foreign-policy knowledge and her ensuing invitation to the crowd to play “stump the candidate” coming at around seven minutes in. (If you can’t get enough, there’s a 37-minute version at CBS.) Like I predicted on the day she was announced, part of the media’s effort to yokel her up will involve knockin’ the G’s off her gerunds when transcribin’ her statements. Geraghty caught the Post doing it; here’s CNN doing the same thing. Think the crowds care how she speaks?

Maybe they do. See Nate Silver’s poll analysis today at TNR as to whether Palin’s momentarily more of a liability to the ticket than an asset. Silver comes from the left but plays things down the middle, although I grant it’d be easier for me to make that argument if he wasn’t including the Daily Kos tracking poll (Research 2000) in his analysis. Still, even ignoring the data from that one, her net favorables are now lower than any of the other three candidates on the tickets as averaged. I can’t believe we’d be doing better with Romney or Pawlenty, but there’s no doubt in the wake of Palinmania that our fate is riding on her performance in a way it wouldn’t have with either of them. Exit quotation: “As Democrats learned with Obama this summer, the more interest there is in one candidate, the more the election comes to serve as a referendum on that candidate.”

Update: Actually, would we be doing better with Romney in light of the market downturn? He very clearly understands what he’s talking about on economic matters, a quality we could use right now, but whether a guy worth $300 million is the right messenger is another question.

Update: Some good news from Pew: Palin’s favorables among independents split 60/27. The only caveat is that the poll was taken Sept. 9-14, which is before the recent downturn in her ratings.

Blowback