I am less worried about Sarah Palin than I am the collective response to her by the media and the blogosphere.
The identity of Trig's mother. Bristol's pregnancy. The quality of her parenting. Troopergate. Earmarks. Oil industry ties. Her right wing socal views. The AIP. Her inexperience. An alleged affair.
Some lines of attack are more legit than others, but the problem is that there are way too many of them for any of them to stick to the low-information public.
Moreover, this kitchen sink "strategy" is only making it easier for her to paint herself as persecuted woman. If the low-info public buys into the crap narrative of her victimhood, they will put their fingers in their ears and say "la la la la, I can't hear you" when anybody raises a justifyable criticism of her.
The Obama campaign is doing the right thing by pulling their punches on Sarah Palin.
But the problem is that the Obama campaign has lost control of the narrative because the traditional media, the tabloids, the blogosphere, etc are all independently attacking Palin in their own, varied ways.
And even if Obama has nothing to do with the more tawdry aspects of Palin-hunting, it will still hurt him electorally. The resulting backlashes in Palin's favor will come at Obama's expense. Unless any of these investigated scandals of hers have a smoking gun easily understood by the low-info public, Sarah Palin is going to evoke the same fervor in her supporters that the Clintons evoked in theirs because in each case they were seen as victims of witch hunts.
So what to do?
My first choice is to ignore her as much as possible. The less she is in the news, the better. The more this is about issues and the less it is about personalities, the better. The ultimate irony is that while the McCain campaign derides Obama's so-called celebrity, they are the ones trying to turn this into a celebrity-driven campaign. While they bash the press, the press's excesses feed into their new narrative of choice: a personality driven campaign starring Sarah Palin.
But it's unrealistic to sit on our hands either. She's going to be attacking us, and we have to respond to her incoming.
But I think if we are going to attack, we need to pick one or two lines of attack and repeat them over and over instead of pursing 10 lines of attack at once.
So which Palin weaknesses should we focus on?
I don't see a lot of yield in attacking her parenting or her alleged affair. Too personal and too high of a backlash risk.
I don't see troopergate getting very far either. Fairly or unfairly, the trooper is a less sympathetic figure because he tased his kid and because he is expressing perfunctory support for her nomination.
Attacks on her inexperience won't really work either. Voters don't really care that much about experience. And we really don't need to be getting into small town/small state arguments.
Her record as mayor and governor are tough issues. There is a lot of evidence that she has mismanaged a number of things. But I don't think attacking her competence will work either. Quayle didn't stop Papa Bush from getting elected. Furthermore, attacks on her competence are going to be distorted as having a sexist tinge, fair or unfair. I don't think this line of attack is worth it, frankly.
In my opinion, there are 2 things we should focus on - her extreme positions on the issues and her AIP associations.
Obviously, focusing on the issues is the most important and justifyable strategy. Every woman needs to know that in Sarah Palin's America, a teenager raped and impregnated by her father must carry the pregnancy to term. Combined with some reminding that Justice Stevens makes John McCain look like a spring chicken, this is an issue that could actually work in dems favor this year. The fact that the Obama campaign is running ads on choice reinforces this. Palin has got the pro-life minority revved up. We need to get the pro-choice majority revved up as well. There are no more supreme court justices to spare.
The other issue we should emphasize is the AIP associations. I think we should pound this over and over and over in order to decrease enthusiasm for her in the GOP base. While the AIP may be semi-tolerated in Alaska, a lot of voters will not be able to understand why she would speak at a convention of anti-American separatists. Even though the association doesn't seem huge, it is still much more substantial than that between Obama and Ayers.
There is little backlash potential in emphasizing the AIP connection because the AIP has no constituency outside Alaska. If we wttack her over the AIP, nobody can credibly call it a sexist attack. There is no way to make the AIP issue about gender.
Paging a 527. Please create some atttack ads on Palin and the AIP to get this issue more into the national conversation.
Anyways, just my 2 cents. I fear that the more we focus on her personal life and troopergate, the less her outside-the-mainstream issue stands and AIP connections will break through.
Let's not make the same mistake with Palin as they made with Obama.
Don't throw the kitchen sink, repeat over and over the least justifyable of her many shortcomings.