This is short, and I will delete it if it's already been covered, but Sean Quinn at fivethirtyeight.com outlines a brilliant strategy for dealing with Sarah Palin.
His main thesis and title of his piece is that
Dems Must Give Voters Explicit Permission To Like Palin
More below ...
He goes on to point out that voters already like her and
When facts are used to discredit Sarah Palin, emotion trumps facts. The instinct is to defend against the facts.
Quinn points out that the Republicans have for years successfully used the fact that emotion, not facts, drives voters. Therefore, what needs to be done
To defuse the Sarah Palin Phenomenon, Democrats need to explicitly give voters permission to both like her as a person and then also not vote for her.
He suggests some narratives:
"Sarah Palin is very likable. There’s nothing wrong with liking her. But this isn’t a zany sitcom where a friendly, plucky Everywoman with dangerous ignorance on foreign policy gets to be vice president. Americans don't deserve someone too scared to do a press conference. Fun for a TV show, but running the country doesn't permit second and third takes when you mess up the scene."
snip
The person John McCain chose to be a heartbeat away from the presidency – Sarah Palin – won’t even have a press conference to answer questions on foreign policy. It’s a fun story about a gutsy, likeable woman that, if it were made into a wacky movie script, we’d all go buy a ticket, but in the real America we can’t play games with people who won’t answer questions about foreign policy. That’s unheard of, and a slap in the face to voters."
Go read the whole thing. This is the way to go.