Sarah Palin may be one of the smartest tactical moves made by the McCain Campaign and the Democrats should be very careful in their line of attack against her. Depending on how she is defined at the Republican Convention she could be a game changer.
Palin was not a smart tactical decision, by any stretch of a normal, rational person's imagination. While it's true that sexism (check out the google hits for VPILF and Matthews' "sexy librarian" comment) in attacking Palin makes me want to vomit in my own mouth, and while there may be some legitimate concern that Biden could utter a gaffe that would exacerbate this, I don't think that the Obama campaign's current line of attack (that she's inexperienced and was a cynical pick made to pander to disgruntled Clinton supporters) is in any danger of backfiring.
Barack Obama is underperforming among female voters in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin in our polling. In these states he is only leading John McCain by 2% to 3% among females where traditionally there has been a double digit lead for Democrats. If Palin can help keep these voters in play and then energize base Republican voters, these states have the potential to flip.
Except that Palin won't bring these voters into play. C'mon! Give me a goddamn break. Clinton is an incredibly smart, incredibly successful politician who is both articulate, witty and knows stuff about the position for which she was running. Palin, by contrast, stated a few months ago that she didn't even know what the VP office does. Clinton is pro-choice; Palin anti-choice. Palin is an extreme conservative who doesn't believe global warming is influenced by humans and she's a freaking creationist. Do you know many Clinton supporters that believe that? This is such a ridiculous debate that we have to have now! I know several Clinton supporters in my office, who in turn know dozens of Clinton supporters - all of whom are insulted by this pandering bullshit.
Finally, by attacking Palin as being inexperienced the Obama Campaign may actually help bolster McCain's own arguments of inexperience against Obama. If Palin is inexperienced to be Vice President based upon her record in Alaska, how can Democrats argue that Obama is experienced to be President based upon his record.
This has to be trolling. Let's see, Palin has been governor for less time than McCain has been a presidential hopeful. Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored hundreds of pieces of legislation. Inexperienced, now? I don't understand how this could possibly "bolster" McCain's statements about Obama's supposed lack of experience. This indicates that McCain's judgement is suspect if he's putting someone with no understanding of the position to which he will presumptively appoint her to and then if McCain's health were to make him incapable of governing, she would take over. Does that make sense to anyone? Does that even compare to a ticket that combines someone who has had years of grassroots organizing and legislating under his resume with one of the Senate's most experienced foreign policy experts?
The answer is no. And the answer to the question of whether this was a smart tactical pick is no.
2 comments:
I'd love to hear what you think about the Bristol preg thing. Did you catch wind of the story that the downs baby (Trig) was actually Bristol's? Just as that was starting to get bigger, we get this story that Bristol is really 5 months pregnant now...
Daily Kos had a revealing article up, but over the past day, they've pulled it. Thank gods for google cache, eh? Here's the page as it used to be:
http://tinyurl.com/5afn9x
There were, and probably still are a number of stories and pictures out on various sites, though the AK gvmt site pulled down many pics and re-dated others, so things are all kinds of muddled. Of course.
I think perhaps both kids belong to the daughter and the few pictures of Palin pregnant were of her in a preg suit. Trig was born in April, so Bristol could theoretically be pregnant again, though perhaps 4 months and not 5? That would still be some impressive baby-making, though. Then there apparently was a myspace page, now made private, where Sarah Palin was referred to as the "mother-in-law" to Trig. ...uh-huh...
It's still a mystery to me, but I really don't think that Sarah Palin was pregnant in the spring of 08 and I do think there's some sort of slightly interesting, totally drama-filled cover-up still going on. I have more links if you're curious, but that Kos one was the most comprehensive. I wonder if they were pressured to take it down?
The sad thing is that Republicans are betting that the American people (especially women) are stupid enough not to actually care about issues. Now, instead of railing on Obama's lack of experience, they're changing their focus to trying to steal the "agents of change" role from Obama, simply by virtue of having a woman on the ticket - not based on any actual policy.
The same kinds of empty-headed people are buying what McCain's camp is feeding them, and thinking that this will be a ground-breaking election now no matter who wins, because either way it's a milestone. But that's not what the change is about. What the Repubicans are banking on (and unfortunately may actually be right about) is that women actually WILL think this way, and vote for McCain (okay, duh, not worth a comment).
What they don't realize, or think about, is that the very worst possible thing could happen. By electing the first woman VP (what they mindlessly believe would be in women’s best interest), they could essentially strip women of everything the Women's Lib movement has fought for for the last CENTURY and beyond!
It's ironic and horrible and I wish that they could only look at themselves, think "Oh shit, if all Americans are as stupid as I am, we're in trouble - no wonder the rest of the world is surpassing America in every facet of every industry - no wonder everything is going to shit... we'd better bulk up our education system, and make smarter Americans, because our politicians have stooped so low as to use our stupidity as a tool, rather than a talking point and a problem worth addressing.”
I’m still mulling over Zakaria’s (sort of new) book and I still don't really know what I think of Zakaria, but I do know that he has a lot to say in there that is very alarming. It’s not BAD for the world, it’s just… disconcerting to think that our country’s on its way out, and falling more behind every day. And the Republicans are exploiting that! Instead of actually DOING something about it!
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