I love this community. I really do. I have learned so much in the almost-a-year that I've been hanging out here for several hours a day.
But I gotta tell you, fellow Kossacks, I think a lot of you are wallowing in hubris and ignorance on the subject of Sarah Palin. I could be wrong, but I do NOT think she is going to crawl back into the woodwork and live on as just a pathetic footnote in history.
I was planning to write this diary anyway, but something I saw on MSNBC a few minutes ago sent a chill down my spine and spurred me to immediate action. Below the fold, the evidence that she remains a very, very dangerous threat to our democracy.
What I saw was a Rasmussen poll showing that among Republicans, Palin has a 91% favorability rating, 65% "very favorable."
91%.
God knows, after their humiliating defeat, Republicans don't agree on much these days. But the one thing they do seem to agree on (except for those few cocktail-party conservatives whom McCain so freely denigrated during the campaign) is the wondrousness of Sarah Barracuda Palin.
I've had the TV on MSNBC for the past several hours, and Palin has been the big topic of the day. Listening to Palin herself, and to her many defenders, I'm seeing the post-election meme that is taking shape in response to the criticisms of Palin, and frankly it scares me.
"Anonymous attacks, sexist in nature, motivated by anger and jealousy, none of them true, just piling on her because they hate her."
Yes, this meme is coming from the mouth of Palin herself. And it's coming from the mouths of the likes of Pat Buchanan. But it's also coming from every other conservative or Republican mouth that is being asked about it.
I don't understand why they're trying to destroy her. She is what's left of the party's brand.
Yes, there IS an element of sexism in the relentless attacks against her; these are silly charges obviously brought up for no reason other than to bring her down.
What are they so afraid of?
Maybe she made a few mistakes, but golly gee, who else in the country could have done half so well if they had just been "dropped into" the campaign out of nowhere like she was? She is obviously very intelligent to have done as well as she did.
We've got conflicting stories about whether she actually knew Africa was a continent, but even if it's true that she made a mistake on this, it was obviously just a gaffe, a slip of the tongue, like Obama's gaffe about 57 states.
Maybe she wasn't as seasoned as she could have been but she now has a few years to brush up on some of that knowledge, and she will come back stronger in 2012.
91%.
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The clear hope on our side is that Obama's excellence as a president will be so self-evident, and he will be so successful, and he will accomplish so much on behalf of the middle class, that the objections to him will melt away and the populists will see him as their savior a la FDR, not as a dangerous anti-American terrorist.
Certainly, under normal circumstances, this would be the most plausible likely outcome of this election.
Unfortunately, part of the reason for Obama's strong showing at the polls was that our circumstances are decidedly NOT normal. We are in an economic crisis the likes of which have not been seen in our lifetimes.
Those of us with book-learnin' know that a crisis of this magnitude is not solved easily, and it is not solved without some -- probably substantial -- degree of pain and sacrifice. Those who celebrate ignorance do not have as clear an understanding of how reality works, especially how something as big and complicated as an economy works.
Obama's vulnerability to being defeated in 2012 by someone like Palin will depend largely on his ability to use his bully pulpit and his fireside chats to educate the Ignorance Contingent about what is and is not possible. I have complete faith that he is the best person in the country to take on this teaching task, but even with his superpowers I'm not confident that, in the face of continued Rethug attacks, he will be successful.
Meanwhile, there appears to be a decent chance that Palin could end up as the next Senator from Alaska, and thereby brush up on her knowledge enough to counter the universal fear that she just simply didn't know enough to be allowed access to the Presidency.
The situation in 2012 will also depend on Obama's ability to break down traditional us-vs.-them divisions. On this point, I have so much faith in his skills and judgment that I doubt even the ability of the hatemongers to thwart his progress. That mitigates against what I said in the previous two paragraphs.
Then again, even if Obama is as wildly successful as we hope, maybe all that will do is defer Palin's attempts to 2016 instead of '12.
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So to those who are already labeling me a concern troll or chicken little, let me clarify my position:
I don't pretend to know how fertile the political ground will be for Sarah Palin's particularly ugly and ignorant brand of conservatism four years from now, or eight years. But the point is, I don't think those of you who are pooh-poohing her know that either. I am stunned and dismayed by the volume of evidence I am seeing today of her continued viability and even enthusiastic support as the future standard-bearer of the opposition party.
I think Obama is the best possible antidote to Palin's chances of a Presidential nomination. But we need to help him out in that regard by not assuming that she is dead and gone when she clearly is not. I don't think the continued blaring "attacks" on her in the media are likely to hurt her; they will just further energize her base. Rather, we need to continue to speak calmly and rationally to other people one-on-one about what Obama is doing for all of us, and about Palin's shortcomings.
And mainly, we need to understand that even if we see Sarah Palin as the biggest political joke to come along since Pat Paulsen, 91% is nothing to laugh at.