September 9, 2008
"Oh boys...look what I got heah!"
Posted by pete at September 9, 2008 10:15 PM
"Hey, where de white wimmen at?"
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday brushed aside a survey that showed him losing support among white women voters to John McCain since the Republican standard-bearer named Sarah Palin as his running mate.
A Washington Post/ABC News survey published on Tuesday found most of McCain's surge in the polls since the Republican National Convention was due to a big shift in support among white women voters.
[...]
Before the Democratic National Convention in late August, Obama held an 8-point lead among white women voters, 50 percent to 42 percent, according to the Washington Post/ABC News poll. After the Republican convention in early September, McCain was ahead by 12 points among white women, 53 percent to 41 percent, that survey found.
Look, I love white women. At least...75% of the people I've dated in my life have been white women. Hell, I even married one. Which is why this poll has to be either a) complete bullshit, b) clearly biased against hip, urban professionals who don't have landlines, or c) only counting those women who don't care that the VP half of the Republican ticket vetoed support for alternative energy, slashed funding that would support teen mothers not named "Bristol," and was in favor of charging rape victims for their forensic exams.
I admit, my circle of friends isn't layered enough to include (that I know of) any women who actually like Palin. So could one of my white female readers out there enlighten me as to what the fuck is going on?
There was a great bit on “The Daily Show” about how all the “Vaginamericans” were going to switch their allegiance to McCain now that he had shown his sympathy for the Vaginamerican agenda (it was funnier when it was satire…).
One of the reasons that I have become fairly allergic to politics is that it seems to be more about whether your “team” is winning rather than anything having to do with the truth. And if your team wins, it somehow justifies all of your own beliefs and makes you feel okay, regardless of whether or not your team can govern effectively or even if your team (or an individual member therof) abides by its own purported ideals. I suppose it’s representative democracy taken to the extreme: we’re more about what someone represents than what he or she actually does. OOF.
I am not a white woman, but I play one on TV. It’s on an obscure pay-per-view channel.
First, there is always a bounce after a convention. Check back in a week.
Second, forget about gender for a second. The key issue for Palin is not that she’s a woman, but that she’s on the crazy end of the GOP spectrum. And crazy GOP supporters come in both genders.
Prior to Palin, crazy GOP types were just not thrilled about answering surveys. Both candidates represented equally gloomy options. Go with the populist schwartze, or the Republican traitor? Prior to Palin, the fundies and the Idaho separatists would rather just stay home on November 2.
But now they have a poster child for their craziness! Never mind that she’s kind of hot; she hates abortion and wants to drill more holes than a Cavity Creep and carefully monitors her household gun/Bible ratio! Naturally the crazies are going to come out of the woodwork.
And with her being a woman, the female crazies are going to be rabid. Once the church pot luck circuit springs into action, it’s only natural to expect a huge surge.
The selection of Palin has every little to do with trying to win over new female voters, and has everything to do with reinvigorating the far right base. That strategy worked in 2000 and 2004, and it might just work now.
My secretary is a white woman w/ a son in the Marines. She’s been a Republican all her life, but 4 years ago she voted for Kerry. She didn’t think GWB knew what he was doing in Iraq, and her son was serving there. This year, she voted for Hillary in the primaries because she wanted a woman in the White House. When Obama got the nomination, she said she didn’t know what she’d do. But Palin has energized her. She LOVED the PTA hockey mom taking on the Good Old Boys, and is now voting for McCain because of her.
I’ve been blogging a lot about the election in general, and Palin in specific, lately. Go here, here, and here if you want to see me in all my full length, unexpurgated, ranting glory on these subjects. (Also check out the last link for the infamous photoshopped picture of Palin in a bikini holding a machine gun.)
To boil everything down for this comment thread, though —
(a) The Dems should get tougher with Palin, and with McCain, for that matter. However, they need to handle attacks on Palin a certain way, which is to say, they need to stay professional and especially keep gender out of them. Palin’s lack of character, insane personal beliefs, inability to actually govern, virulent racism, etc, etc… these are all fair game, and should be put front and center. What Dems will be tempted to do, but must not, is label Palin a bitch, or any derogatory vulgate for vagina. The far right, especially their wimmen, are already in a frenzy over the [expletive deleted]. The last thing we need is to give them more excuse for outrage, while job one at this point is to expose her for exactly the kind of no good tiny minded anti intellectual bigot she actually is.
(b) Don’t pay so much attention to polls. McCain is going to get a bounce and, yeah, Palin is going to help him with certain demos. Nonetheless, McCain has abandoned his “Experience” campaign pitch (when it didn’t move in the polls) and pivoted to “Maverick/Change/Reformer”. This means, essentially, he has decided to play Obama in Obama’s home stadium, but it’s much worse than that for him. He has basically decided to try to out rope-a-dope Ali, or to beat the Flash in a foot race. It’s a losing strategy, no matter how he energizes the far right whackos with his VP pick. If people really want Change, and Reform, and a Maverick Outsider, who are they going to pick? You don’t even need to intellectualize it. Just look at them. Which one really represents something new in presidential politics, the young smart charismatic black guy who genuinely seems to care, or the old white geezer who can’t talk right and who is obviously willing to wheel his grandmother to the glue factory if it picks him up two more votes?
All of this completely ignores the apparently huge potential Palin has to blow up in the GOP’s faces before November. Leaving aside all her various skeletons and regional scandals (although any of them could splatter back big, if they develop right), there’s still the fact that she’s a backwoods bigot who can’t stand being contradicted and has difficulty holding onto her temper (just like her ‘soulmate’, McCain). There’s a reason the GOP is desperately hiding her from the media, but the media don’t play dat. They Old White Boys are going to have to start trotting her out, and the chances of her opening her mouth and saying something TREMENDOUSLY stupid on live national television (like “So Sambo beat the bitch”, her ‘witty’ summation of the Democratic primaries, see http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/05/alaskans-speak-in-a-frightened-whisper-palin-is-%E2%80%9Cracist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean%E2%80%9D/) are pretty good.
All in all, we’re a long way from November, and for what it’s worth, I think Obama has shown a deftness at handling tough opponents — including very formidable women — that gives me some confidence that this is a good ways from over.
As a side note, I suspect if Palin ever became Prez, she’d be in for a rude awakening. The GOP ain’t gonna let no chick run things. As a general rule, they favor confused dimwitted figureheads who look good on camera and who can be depended on to spend most of their time off camera taking naps or clearing brush. Palin strikes me as being much too power hungry to relax to that kind of deal. She’s going into this thinking she’s going to be the next Dick Cheney, and I think she’s going to be bitterly disappointed, should she get into office.
All of the comments above mine are great and just fucking scary. I am so scared I actually looked into how I could move my teaching certification to England (I have a British passport in addition to my US one—long story).
Some of my thoughts: Why the hell isn’t the press playing hardball with Palin? Every time I watch the news, I’m thinking of all the key shit right on the periphery of what they’re saying that they don’t come out and say, like when the MSNBC mike caught those two pundits speaking frankly about the Palin pick. Really, what are they scared of? Why not fill the airwaves with all the scary stuff Palin said about God and going to war and all the borderline lies in her claims and assertions (like that her plane never actually sold on eBay, or that she tried to fire her town’s librarian for not banning certain books).
I’d like Charlie Gibson to ask her (he’s in Alaska tomorrow) nothing but really dense foreign policy questions. Tell her to stick that on eBay.
Check out this frankness (I know, who cares what actors say, but at least what he says gets in the press):
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/10/damon-rips-palin-calls-her-terrifying/
If the GOP wins, I’ll mix the KoolAid. Drinks served November 5th. Come as you are.
it’s not about polls, it is about getting the white, black, latino, single mom’s registered and driven on a day you take off to the polls…get to walmart folks and start registering people…. It is also getting the older people, who have seen all this crap before and are tired of it…those that remember FDR and Kennedy and are registered and consider voting a sacred and cherished act of patriotism, but can’t drive themselves to the polls anymore. Get these people to the polls on election day and don’t worry about the other guys…we have work to do.
As a white woman I’m certainly not going to vote for McCain/Palin just because she’s a woman. I do not vote with my vagina! As one of the other comments said - she is on the crazy end of the spectrum. Right now Palin is brining out all of the super conservative people - the ones who are more likely to have land lines & not a cell as their primary phone. I think as time goes on we will find out how crazy Palin really is. When she was mayor she talked about what God wanted her to do for the city. She also talked about banning books & fired the librarian. This woman has no place being 2nd in command of the US! I find her very very scary!!
I do not vote with my vagina!
I apologize profusely. Just reading that, I’ve got so many dirty jokes running through my head right now that I’m surprised I have all this room in my head for it.
But you know, I always wondered where my high school education went. Now I see.
[Note: Not one of Pete’s white female readers]
I really hate the way the tempo of the GOP has changed since Palin has come on board. Of course next to McCain’s stodgy appearance and oratorial skills, just about anyone could invigorate the party. I think Obama needs to get out of defensive mode and start taking it to the opposition before the momentum changes any further. It is apparent that the Palin nomination has caught the Obama team completely off-guard and they are reeling. I am starting to have the sinking feeling that we might be looking at another turning point where, like Kerry, the Dems are continually on the defense. The Dems need to get serious, and they need to get a little bit dirty. The time to play nice is long over, and if Palin wants to take off the gloves, then Obama, Biden, and the entire Democratic machine need to get out the verbal pipes and get medieval on their asses. They need to get over the fact that Palin is a woman and treat her just like any other GOP candidate. I would also like to see Biden get in there and go into attack mode. Seeing him in action during Senate hearings, I think that he could be very effective in this role.