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The mishandling of Sarah Palin
There they go again. The attack dogs drooling over every small piece of personal history in an attempt to drive someone from the stage. In this case it was attack dogs from the blogosphere's Democratic side, and the target, Sarah Palin, is an extremist harpy who is, in fact, unqualified to be on the national stage. However, by focusing on details of her family and personal life, they played into her hands. This is because by making the question as to whether Sarah Palin, the mother and family member is qualified to be on the national stage, they made it so that her speech simply had to be about her ability to read a speech well. The reactions from the Guardian UK: "Sarah Palin storms convention with prime-time speech" and New York Times: "Palin Assails Critics and Electrifies Party", coupled with the glowingly flattering pictures, underline the depth of the Cannaesque blunder of the attack dogs.
Rather than defining her as a frenetic extremist who is a bundle of contradictions: a supposed free-marketeer whose state's residents get large checks from the government, a clean government campaigner who wins elections based on bringing home government pork, a Christianist extremist who is bent on reducing rights while claiming to be part of the Leave-us-alone coalition, they allowed her to defend her family. Suddenly she was not an empty suited attack dog, but a mother defending her family and her way of life, not a politician defending why she should impose that way of life on others, and have others subsidize her choices.
And in doing so they undermined Obama's own post-partisan narrative, since personal attacks are precisely what ordinary Americans define as "partisan politics."
Palin's appointment underlines how far to the right America's political dialog has shifted. To nominate someone in a similar position to Palin, the Democratic Party would have had to nominate, not Russ Feingold, but Cynthia McKinney, as Vice-President. Someone from deep inside of the Democratic urban core with a penchant for reaching farther than the evidence sometimes permits, and whose constituencies thrive on the reddest of red meat politically. It is not an exageration to say that Sarah Palin is less moderate that Ron Paul, or Bob Barr, among Republicans. No Democratic politician, however, would be allowed close to the national stage being as vicious and vociferous as Palin is.
The important thing to realize about Palin is that she is, and was, and will remain, a defensive play by the Republicans. In attacking her directly the blogosphere made one of the oldest mistakes in online politics: do not feed the trolls. By feeding the troll, all the troll had to do was prove, not competence, but ordinary humanity. Palin has been groomed for years for this moment. She was not an unready pick by McCain, but a calculated choice by backers like The Club for Growth.
As a defensive play she is the creature of the "one acre one vote" constituencies of the Republican Party, of the Christianist extremists, of the NASCAR widow moms. A person from the world of anti-choice women, because in that world a woman being anti-choice publicly is part and parcel of a strategy. It is a way of a woman signaling that she isn't going to drain a man's resources in return for just sex, but that he has a chance of producing offspring, and if there are offspring, they will live. The story of her pregnant daughter underlines how this process works: her boyfriend is now a father to be and husband to be and not just a prop on the way to an ultimate marriage. Sperm competition in action.
As a defensive play her job was to engage, in a way they had not been engaged, the far right wing hinterlands, and the attack dogs of the right. McCain, as a tired old wax candle that is more than half way to melting, excites little love among them. The energy for McCain was in 2000-2004, but as soon as McCain-Feingold was passed, so too was his political moment. His entire campaign now is that he is a successful gambler. That the surge was a gamble that worked. Now Palin adds to it. McCain took a gamble, she paid off last night.
Thus instead of marginalizing Palin, the attacks made her mainstream. Even extremists have children.
-:-
What lessons should be drawn from this? The first lesson is the simplest. Media abhors a message vacuum. The reason for the attacks from the left is that the left has little reason to vote. Provided with a surrogate in their own personal narrative of escaping a sexually charged, and yet sexually repressed, reactionary family under a domineering parent, they could not resist attacking it. They are also not excited about Obama. Who is talking about Obama's speech now? Who talked about it the moment Palin was announced? The clear failure of Obama's strategy of making himself a messiah figure with arena rock overtones - REO Speedwagon, or in a nod to Chicago those rock Reaganites, Styx, set to politics - is seen by a simple fact. As soon as Palin was released his big power ballad was blown right out of number one.
It is also a sign of the abject failure of Obama's ability to harness the blogosphere. Rather than providing message that could be followed, Obama's campaign was adrift on Palin message, and this created the void that angry and bored bloggers flowed into.
The second lesson is one of audience. Palin is poisonous in her politics to the middle: she represents the leeches that are sucking their blood through higher oil prices. She represents the ex-urbanite war voters who adhere, still, to Bushims. She is, however, rather much like them in their personal lives. She wants to raise good children who mind their parents. So too do Hillary voters, Obama voters, and almost every other voter. Now that evolution and society require that children take chances and make choices, is something that they struggle with, but Palin's prescription: lay down harsh rules and clean up the mess, is not unfamiliar as a parenting style across the country. Palin's person is that of a suburban sports mom, or small time family trying to make ends meet. It isn't the reality of her carefully vetted and carefully crafted rise to power, but it is how she presents.
The audience should then, have been to the person who is paying too much for gasoline, who is tied to the metropolitan growth economy. Palin's politics, despite their differences, are not far from Hugo Chavez' politics: oil socialism and moralizing about the state of her people. By attacking her personal life, this was obliterated.
The last lesson is flexibility. Having followed the Village-Americans down the road of personal attacks, the blogosphere needs to learn not, not ever, follow the Village-Americans in their narratives. The Village attacked her person as a way of seeing if she would play on a national stage, to see if she had the June Cleaver Teflon. Having made it through this, the Village-Americans, and even their British counter-parts, are now throwing themselves at the latest Republican creation. Palin is not going to be dragged down, but lifted up after having been knocked, and not too hard.
The blogosphere must now make the best of a bad thing. Palin is proof that politics has not changed, that we are given the average between a soft Reaganite like Obama, a bankruptcy bill loving Biden, and a warhead McCain, and extremist Palin. This covers the American political spectrum from about L to X, and thus averages, where it has for some time, on R.
Having attacked, she cannot be attacked for what she plainly is: Ann Coulter who doesn't need a face lift and facial feminization surgery. Having been vetted, all carping about her past is now old news. She's on the stage. The strategy is to get people to think about what her politics means, and how she is a series of contradictions. She's a welfare queen Republican. And that is what she needs to be portrayed as.
Her politics don't add up. She's a free market socialist: her state lives on checks from oil socialism. She's an anti-family June Cleaver, voting to slash funds for other people's disabled children, even as she has ridden on Easy Street up the ladder. She's an anti-choice libertarian: for a broad reading of the 2nd amendment, and a narrow reading of all the others. She's small government on libraries, and big government on bridges and hockey rinks. Lower taxes on home owners, while she pries pennies from children for their afternoon snack.
Palin doesn't make sense as a politician. And it as a politician that she needs to be attacked.
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