OK, so the rape kits in Alaska do NOT contain emergency contraception, and Palin's opposition to them may not have had anything to do with her radical anti-abortion views.
I fell into that trap, and I've resolved never again to do so. I think a lot of us progressives have learned a few things over the last few weeks about how to attack a candidate that we hate and fear... and how not to.
Obama actually shows how to do it right. He's been pounding pretty relentlessly on McCain-- not about personal or character issues, but about the many gaffes and fuck-ups McCain is making that illustrate how wrong McCain is on the issues. i.e. McCain saying he wanted to take out the "old boy network" in DC when his economic advisor is good ol' boy Phill Gramm, stuff like that. Or his gaffe about having 7 houses and not knowing exactly how many he owned.
Here's what I see Obama doing right: if the gaffe or mistake illustrates a POLICY PROBLEM, then Obama jumps all over it with both feet. If it illustrates only a character problem, Obama leaves it alone. I think that's very smart. He uses the attacks on his opponents in order to sell his own policy proposals. Nice work.
I learned first-hand that Palin in general is a trap, just like Bush was. It's hard to avoid it though. If you attack her character, you step right into the Rove/Atwater/Reagan/Nixon "culture war" trap. It's worth re-reading Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas?". McCain and Palin are hiding behind these bullshit "identity politics" facades. If we attack the facade then it's an instant loss, because the facade is set up to resemble too many real voters-- and their ideals about themselves-- who take offense to being attacked. Sure, Palin is a redneck, and a fundamentalist wacko, runs her family in a manner as bizarre as Rick Santorum's, is corrupt, vain, brutally authoritarian and parochial, and she's a habitual (and probably sociopathic) liar. So what?
The problem is that if we sneer at her redneck-ness, then real rednecks, most of whom are just ordinary working folks being crushed by the same corporate monster that we all are, will view us as "elitist" and vote for her. Fuck. If we are horrified by her weird religous beliefs, then we risk alienating religious voters who don't share her extremist views, but do share her religion. This is the same trap we fell into by calling Bush "dumb" and making fun of his poor English and his fake folks-isms and his "chosen by god" posturing. People who didn't have the benefit of our erudition, rallied behind him and voted for him in large numbers--- twice!!-- even though he was, and still is, a disaster to their interests. Again I'm pretty much paraphrasing Thomas Frank again.
But calling Palin "dumb" or sneering at her family dysfunction is even doubly dangerous compared to calling Bush "dumb"-- because she's managed to raise 5 kids (even if a few of them appear to be deeply troubled) and drive herself from being a hockey mom to governor and now VP candidate in just a few years; she's obviously not dumb. I've found that even very educated women who hate Palin, will bristle at anyone implying she's an idiot just because, say, she believes that the earth was created 5000 years ago. Again, so what? She's made a success of herself and it's not possible to attack her on that. Then again, Bush graduated Harvard with an MBA, so even with his family legacy connections helping him out, he couldn't have done that and be stupid either. And he wasn't, he's just, like Palin, ignorant, brutal, ambitious, and brainwashed by a radical fundamentalist sect. And why does that matter? The character flaws don't, really, unless there's some way to use them to illustrate the policy flaws.
That's the new approach that I've deduced from watching Obama at work. And it seems to work very well indeed.
I think the rape kits one falls in that category, big time. I mean, come on, charging victims for rape kits? There is no better illustration of the cruel Republican "you're on your own" policies, than charging victims for rape kits. I don't care why she did it. But she definitely did it (and signed the budget which did so), and she and her fellow "you're on your own" Republicans can and should be taken to task on it.
So here is what I've learned so far:
- Nobody that I disagree with is "dumb" or "stupid" because they don't agree.
- A gaffe or character flaw is only fair game if it illustrates a policy flaw. i.e. , McCain doesn't know how many houses he owns, Palin makes rape victims pay for their own forensics etc.
- Religion doesn't matter until it gets used to create or defend bad public policy (i.e. teaching creationism, banning same-sex marriage, banning abortion or contraception).
Anyway, that's all I've been able to come up with so far. I'm sure this'll be a learning process over the next few months.