The West Wing analogy still holds

The West Wing 2006 Presidential election remains eerily comparable to the 2008 one, albeit with a slight kink.

Matt Santos = Obama
Leo McGarry = Joe Biden
Arnold Vinick = John McCain

Vinick wanted to pick Reverand Don Butler to shore up the anti-abortion GOP base but went instead for Gov. Ray Sullivan, as an 'attack dog'. Unlike Vinick Sullivan was 'pro-life' like Butler but less nutty.

After Vinick's loss, Sullivan was seen as the frontrunner for the next nomination.

Mudflats is an Alaskan blog which has all the background on evangelical right-wing hypocrite from nowhere Sarah Palin. Literally, here's the main street of the nowhere town she was mayor of eighteen months ago:-



In particular Mudflats details the "trashy novel" corruption inquiry she's at the centre of involving her sister's police husband, messy divorce and hubbie standing in for Palin to pressure for the set-up and firing of said police husband.

Jane Smiley in HuffPost outlines questions to ask Palin in a post titled "make her whine":

What is her religion and who is her pastor? Is she a Christian Dominionist and how does she feel about the separation of church and state? How does she square her roles as mother and politican? Who is taking care of the kids while she is away, including the baby?

Do the disabled children of rich people get special treatments that their parents can afford, while the disabled children of poor people get nothing? Who is the boss in her family? If it's her, then I want to know how that squares with Christian notions of patriarchy. If it's the husband, then I want to know his values and beliefs.

If she's a family values right winger, I would expect her to back those values up by breastfeeding for six months to a year, at least. If she's not breastfeeding, frankly, and she doesn't believe in birth control, then she's a hypocrite. She has to run as a right wing family values soccer mom or she has to run as a woman who has gained freedoms through the efforts of other women. She can't do both.

Is she really a gun-toting moose-killer, or is this a pose? What are her ties to the oil and gas industries -- and I don't mean her beliefs. I want to know who paid her and when and how much. She says she doesn't know what the vice president does, so I want to know what she thinks about Dick Cheney and the unitary executive. I want to know if she understands the Constitution and what the limits of the executive branch are. I want to know if she's ever been abroad, if she has ever written anything about the Iraq war, or if she's just a follower with a pretty smile, who goes along with the big boys in order to get a little something for herself.

Here's something which gets zero MSM play: Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. As will this, concerning Palin's hypocrisy. Though this, potentially worse and completely OTT, is bound to whizz around the interwebs (already has 2300 diggs).

But here's something which also gets little play. The electoral vote (not the same as the headline polls or the actual vote, as many found out in 2000) has been for Obama for months - I just added the electoral-vote.com widget.



These numbers are why McCain has done something this desperate. He's losing.