Blind Prophecy

As the news and blog echo chamber desperately tried to figure out how to characterize political cipher and blank slate Sarah Palin (it seems the VPILF thought is catching on, sadly… can’t we find better ways to mock her than resorting to sexism? how about her utterly insane desire to see creationism taught as science? She’s not a VPILF, she’s the holier-than-thou lady from church who lectures other people’s children for misbehaving in the supermarket), the most provocative thing I’ve read yet is an analysis of what the pick says about John McCain on Yahoo News.

The article by Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris ignores the obvious questions about how women will react, how Evangelicals will react, etc., and lists 6 things that this selection says about John McCain:

1. He’s desperate. Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests. The truth is McCain is essentially tied or trailing in every swing state that matters … McCain could easily lose in an electoral landslide.
2. He’s willing to gamble — bigtime. Let’s face it: This is not the pick of a self-confident candidate.
3. He’s worried about the political implications of his age. Like a driver overcorrecting out of a swerve, he chooses someone who is two years younger than the youthful Obama and 28 years younger than he is.
4. He’s not worried about the actuarial implications of his age. … If he were really concerned about an inexperienced person sitting in the Oval Office, we would be writing about vice presidential nominee Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge or Condoleezza Rice.
5. He’s worried about his conservative base. If he had room to maneuver, there were lots of people McCain could have selected who would have represented a break from Washington politics as usual. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman comes to mind (and it certainly came to McCain’s throughout the process). He had no such room.
6. At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain. People may find him a refreshing maverick or an erratic egotist. In either event, he marches to his own beat.

While there’s no room for us to sit back and pretend everything will be fine, I think this veep pick shows just how badly the McCain campaign is going, and it’s only going to get worse after the debates. Obama will wipe the floor with McCain, who is counting on scoring “rough points” on topics like the troop surge, experience and offshore drilling, while Obama will continue talking about his middle class tax breaks, jobs, and health care. My guess is, Obama has a better read on the concerns of the majority of Americans right now.

Also, regardless of what the transparent Republican talking heads are saying on the cable news networks, all I’ve been hearing from middle-class, white, independent women voters and Hilary die-hards is the same “Ohmygod, like, my vagina will totes make me vote for Palin… wait, nevermind, my brain turned on.”

Filed under: politics by Jere Keys