This election makes my head hurt. So lets talk about the next one!
Everyone is talking about Sarah Palin, and whether she’s going to run for President in 2012. I’ll go ahead and say it’s a near guarantee: either she’ll lose, or McCain will die in office, but either way this woman is on or near the ballot in 4 years (or, judging by this election, in about 2 years, when the primaries start, and we all want to die again). New York Magazine says she’ll be the next Reagan, firing up the base and revitalizing the GOP.
Like Carter, Obama will be inheriting a country backlashing from a wildly unpopular Republican President, and he might face a re-organized GOP freed of the ideological baggage picked up over the last 8 years. But I don’t think Palin has the wherewithal to do as Reagan did and hold the GOP coalition together – rather, I think she’s a fringe/polarizing figure akin to Ron Paul, able to mobilize a small segment of the voter base to a very particular cause. I think she’ll run a campaign to the cultural right of the eventual GOP candidate, and leave the party for an independent run with someone like Mike “God has surprises in store” Huckabee. I think she’s a little too self interested and too ideological to put up with a mainstream party run for the whole course of an election cycle, and will bust out her own party when the time comes. Now let us pray…
There’s nothing left to say. McCain tried to co-opt Obama’s frame with the Palin pick, and it ended up sinking him. I think people will look back and say he had a fighting chance as the voice of reason and experience next to the up-and-comer with no real background (think Celeb ad), but as soon as he tried to change tack and go for the mantle of change, he lost momentum on both fronts. It seems like McCain never fully grappled with the fact that Obama’s narrative worked because of who he is, what he looks like, and his story. It wasn’t about reform policies – how many campaign reform bills you backed, times you took on your party – Obama doesn’t look like old politics, McCain does.
Which doesn’t mean he was doomed – or slated to be in a spot as bad as the one he’s in now. The tried and true, steady hand message like the one in McCain’s Storm ad, had a shot at effectiveness – even in 2004, in the middle of the worst part of the War in Iraq, after fucking Abu Ghraib, and people went for the fear and dread over a new face, and McCain had it. But he tried to have it both ways, and Obama out classed him – in all senses of the word.
Maverick --> Diva. from DebbieC's flickr photostream
The latest Palin meme that has the VP pick going ‘off message’ smacks of more nasty gender politics – just like the wardrobe furor. An off-the-record McCain staffer described her leaving the narrow GOP talking points as ‘diva’ tactics – a not-so-subtle way to gender-code her as John McCain’s unruly woman leaving the masculine fold.
Not to say that Palin doesn’t embrace some fairly uncool gender roles – ‘hockey mom,’ also stay at home mom who sees contraceptive is unacceptable, etc. – but it makes me very uncomfortable when people describe her as a MILF or hyper-sexualized moose hunting snow bunny.
One way or another Palin functions as a symbol of women in politics – I’d like to see folks be able to talk about her actions on the campaign trail without needing to talk about her as a woman in the same way that they talk about McCain or Obama or Biden without needing to talk about them as men. It continues to mark women in politics as exceptional (and possibly deviant), and that’s dangerous in its own right, independent of the dangers of a Palin/McCain Presidency.
When the Sarah Palin nomination was announced, Pat Buchanan called her selection “the biggest political gamble, just about in American history”
I think we can now conclude what the payout from that gamble will be: Palin is hurting McCain big time, and she has started to out-Maverick McCain.
Palin was an unknown to America, and apparently also to the McCain campaign. Obama should hold on to that 130 million and invest in housing or something, it looks like it might be a waste to spend it in other ways.
The net-o-blog-o-sphere has invested a good deal of digital ink to the revelation that RNC spent 150,000 dollars on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe over the past few months. Not only does this look off-message from the ‘above the fray’ tone of the Obama campaign, it also might fall totally flat – while making the Democrats look ‘out to get‘ Palin.
Look, progressives are totally obsessed with the idea that the GOP represents a false front to the working class that they jump on personal spending as a reason that the republicans don’t represent ‘real’ people – when the argument against the Democrats with the working class is caught up in tax policy, good stories (JOE), and ‘egghead government’ as the individual people making those policies. Also, I think there’s a lot of working class folks who would like to spend 150,000 dollars of GOP money on clothes if they got the chance. We also live in a patriarchal society – folks expect women to look nice, and I think people will excuse spending money from campaign donors on gettin’ all dolled up.
McCain’s attempt to brand Obama doesn’t need to make sense, it just needs to be repeated. Check out this video via Andrew Sullivan:
there’s a point at about 2:30, when a woman talks about Obama and Bill Ayers. She clearly knows nothing about it, and reverts to simple telegraphic speech to make her point “Obama. Ayers. Connection. What else do you need to know?”
This is the type of simple-associative connections at the core of Republican campaign strategy, as explained by George Lakoff. They’ll set up a frame where ‘Obama’ ‘Ayers’ and ‘Terrorist’ are powerfully linked, along with several other word-images (probably something about ‘bin Laden’ and ‘evil’) that activate each other in a network of ideas. Once the frame is set up, even attempts to refute the claim using the same words will reinforce the associations. That’s why folks will believe some of this crap, without being able to tell you anything about what it means, or why it’s true.
The coffee of Barack Obama. from Barrybar's flickr photostream
I’m glad to see the McCain/Palin campaign pushing dangerous and absurd talking points to their full ‘logical’ conclusion, at which point they simply fall apart under the weight of their own stupidity.
For instance, I would be glad to take another week or two of the election just to get John McCain and Sarah Palin on TV to explain things like “pro-American America” then watch their words turn to ash in their mouths. I want to see these arguments tumble down the slippery slope to their wretched death.
