My partner said something to me the other day that surprised me, and got me thinking that Sarah Palin might not be as helpful in bringing the conservative vote to John McCain as the traditional media believe. What he said was, "What is she doing running for Vice-President? She has five kids including a handicapped baby at home!"
Now certainly others have said this, but coming from my partner it was surprising. He's definitely not sexist—intellectually, he knows that being a parent certainly does not disqualify a woman for the job of Vice-President or any other job, and he said as much. Were he in a managerial position, he wouldn't think of discriminating against a job applicant on that (or any other) basis. In fact, I was expecting him to talk about the many good reasons Sarah Palin is not qualified to be VP. But his reaction was about her family situation.
And that reaction, however ill-founded, could spell trouble for the McCain-Palin ticket. Follow me over the flip for more...
My partner isn't the only one who's expressed this sentiment. As reported by CNN:
Some feel that Palin's choice to run shows poor judgment.
"I think she made the wrong call. It's not her time," said Andy Stably of Salem, New Hampshire. "Given her personal situation and her special circumstances, it does seem more important than the nomination she's accepting. I don't think that should be blanket statement for all moms. But the job she's about to interview for is the job of jobs, and it's going to require her to sacrifice what she has at home."
Stably has children of his own, and his wife works full-time. He says this experience has helped shape his views on Palin: "Doesn't everyone, male or female, think about the impact a job offer would have on their personal life before accepting the offer?"
"It's not a sexist thing," said Jeanette Lee, who is raising a 15-month-old baby of her own. "If my family was having these sorts of issues, I wouldn't be putting them in the spotlight and making them go through this publicly. For her to walk away from her baby with special needs just shows her character. I feel like she should pay more attention to her whole family."
"If her children were older, it wouldn't be an issue," Lee added.
But what's especially interesting is how this relates to my partner's background.
My partner comes from a traditional Catholic family, and grew up mostly in small towns. His father worked while his mother, who became a mother at a young age, stayed home with him and his three siblings. The kids were all home-schooled for part of their childhood. The family might be considered conservative, but it's certainly not political. Politics never comes up at the dinner table. In fact, conversation usually revolves around gossip about family or people in town. When the parents vote, they probably vote Republican more often than not, but I doubt they've voted in every election.
These kinds of voters are not part of the Republican base. Instead, they're the kinds of voters that the conservative base must knock on doors and work the phones to turn out in November if they're to have any chance of winning. In fact they should have started a few months ago, but they've only just now gotten excited, so they're a bit behind the curve already.
So what does this have to do with the reaction to Palin's family situation? The key is that voting decisions are based as much, if not more than, on gut reactions as on policy positions. And gut reactions revolve around identity -- do you identify with the candidate? Thus all the statements last time around about Bush being "the kind of guy people would like to have a beer with." In this case, the McCain campaign is hoping that socially conservative voters, especially women, will identify Sarah Palin with themselves.
But what if, instead, voters from "traditional" families tend to identify Palin not with themselves, but with their mothers? After all, the McCain camp is trying to build a narrative of Palin as an "everyday hockey mom." So it makes sense that a voter like my partner might see Palin and compare her to his mom. And that comparison isn't at all favorable to Palin. My partner knows his mother as someone who was always there for him and the other kids, and looks at Sarah Palin and sees someone he wouldn't have wanted as his mom.
This could be especially problematic for McCain-Palin with younger voters. Younger evangelicals are already starting to break with the GOP, seeing the environment (among other issues) as important as the usual Republican wedge issues. So Palin already has a strike against her there. If they look at Sarah Palin and see not a reflection of themselves, but the absent mother they're glad they didn't have, it may be near impossible for McCain to win back that important demographic.