In the current scenario, I suspect that the Palin choice will have a much larger influence on conservative voters than did the Quayle choice. She has brought a lot of conservatives back to McCain, many of whom were perfectly willing to stay home on election day.

You’re probably right about the chronological order, though. The “potatoe” incident stuck in my mind as the most blatant example of (what I regarded at the time as being) an inappropriately exaggerated slam against Quayle, but it was certainly not the first.

The tightrope that Biden needs to walk (and that, as you point out, liberals generally would be well advised to follow) is to avoid name-calling or emotional appeals and to calmly and politely stick to the facts of relevant issues, but to stick to those facts firmly and repeat them as needed — without rancor — until they are heard.

Sure, somebody, somewhere, will spin anything that’s said into whatever satisfies their agenda. But in the first place, that’s going to happen no matter what else one does. And in the second place, I think that most uncommitted people who see/hear/read the actual content will recognize the difference between statements of fact and insults. Even if they never check on the actual facts and assume that anyone who contradicts Palin is lying, it would still count for something if the statement contained no outright insults or innuendoes against her.

~David D.G.

Maybe someone should start telling people to get a little less hard on Palin.
Then again, what’s the alternative?