http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/dems-mus…:
Emotion is something Republicans have understood for many cycles. George Bush’s Ohio 2004 closing “argument” Ashley ad, which simply featured Bush hugging a teenage girl who’d lost her mom on 9/11, underscored this expertise in emotional messaging. Re-watch that ad and notice the line toward the end: “I saw what I want to see.” You can’t talk people out of emotional certainty.
To defuse the Sarah Palin Phenomenon, Democrats need to explicitly give voters permission to both like her as a person and then also not vote for her. If I were scripting the pivot, based on my conversations out in the field and away from the bubble of cable news and online analysis, I’d try something like the following (edit: in Biden’s debate, in stump speeches or voter-to-voter persuasion and possibly in ads):
“Sarah Palin is very likable. There’s nothing wrong with liking her. But this isn’t a zany sitcom where a friendly, plucky Everywoman with dangerous ignorance on foreign policy gets to be vice president. Americans don’t deserve someone too scared to do a press conference. Fun for a TV show, but running the country doesn’t permit second and third takes when you mess up the scene."



