I was out of town last weekend when Obama selected Biden to be his
VP. I exchanged a few texts with friends and advisers as I drove
across the high desert. Mostly they sought assurance that Biden
would be a decent pick, particularly after I knocked him around a bit.
I remember thinking at the time that should Obama lose the election,
the post-mortem surrounding Biden’s selection would be a most
interesting read. There had to have been another camp
suggesting a different pick. Ultimately it was Barry’s decision,
and it’s one I can live with. Biden will make a fine post-Cheney
administrator, which is what Obama needs.
This Palin thing is a stumper. When I first heard it, I
immediately thought it was a cheap pander to the disaffected Hillary
supporters. And it is. But in a way, I think it was the
perfect pick for McCain. He needed someone who could bridge the
gap between his right wing and the moderates. Someone who could be
acceptable to both. Romney wasn’t that person. Neither was
Rudy. Or, really, Pawlenty.
In Palin you get a combination of Patty Murray’s “mom in tennis
shoes” and Jan Crouch, with a little Charlton Heston thrown in.
Perfect!
The problem is the selection has completely turned off the very
people it was meant to attract. Betty with Sunglasses emailed this
morning to ask if she should be worried about the selection.
“Worried?” I said, “the selection is aimed straight at you!
Outdoor-loving mom who loves her man and the baby Jesus. What’s
not to love?”
Betty, once a Hillary supporter, is 100% for Obama these days.
She’s exactly the voter McCain wants. The thing is, I suspect that
neither Betty nor the millions like her sees themselves in Palin.
Certainly not in McCain. And that’s a problem. If you’re
going to gamble on one particular voting bloc (the voting Bettys!),
you’d better be damn sure you understand them. McCain and the
Republicans don’t.
This lack of understanding won’t, however, keep Hannity and his ilk
from beating Betty over the head with the fact she’s a hypocrite for
supporting Hillary because she was a woman while failing to support
Palin. Guilt tripping those you’re trying to woo is not a good way
to make friends and influence people. In fact, it pisses them
off. Betty is more pro-Obama now than when she woke up. Like
I said…fascinating.
Sidebar: You know what else is fascinating? This.
Give it a few minutes. It’s really a slow burn. It’ll sneak
up on you. Genius does that sometimes. End Sidebar.
Sullivan was on fire today discussing everything from the origins of her kids names (could you imagine if Obama had named one of his children Willow?) to observations from Alaska.
My thoughts, however come back to that 3am wake-up call that Hillary
asked us to imagine. Is Palin ready for something like that?
Sullivan ponders:
It occurs to me that some on the right actually think
that Obama is as inexperienced and as trivial a figure as Palin. So ask
yourself: could Sarah Palin have run a national election campaign
against, say, a machine as powerful as the Bush family, and won? Does
she have the skill set to construct a campaign that would actually have
brought her to the nomination herself? I find the comparison with Obama
ludicrous. But it will be made. Palin looks to me like a lovely person
and a good local politician, with some inevitable rough spots. I’d be
delighted if she took a leadership role in the GOP in the future. But in
the same league as Obama? Do Republicans really think that little of
him?
I guess they do. We are looking at a different person.”
Had Hillary won the Dem nomination, would McCain have gone with
Jindal to try and capture the “I wanted to vote for the brown-skinned
guy” vote?
The clincher, and the one which should give McCain’s people the most pause, was the email I received from Pete in Parkrose.
Well, it’s official. My in-laws never liked McCain, and Palin is
the proverbial straw. It helps that they already liked Obama to begin
with, and now they will be voting democrat for the first time in their
LIVES.
I can feel better about my conscience knowing that they turned the corner with me. I think he’ll get my vote.
Pete’s in-laws are pretty conservative Mormon’s living in Northern
Idaho. If McCain lost them over this pick, then it’s over.
This may well turn into a bloodbath.The problem now is it’s just too
close to the convention to choose another running mate, isn’t it? I
mean a month from now, I suspect a lot of people are going to seriously
regret this choice, but they’ll be stuck with it. McCain may wish
he’d done this around the Fourth of July instead.