McCain's choice of Palin is deeply cynical and it is a Rovian tactic. We are all agreed on this point, but there is zero profit for our side in fixating on this woman--ZERO. In fact, it will only strengthen the types of narratives that the Republicans have been using continuously to beat us. Perhaps it's because I'm currently reading George Lakoff's The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain, but I'm deeply paranoid about this Palin thing.
The hope in the McCain campaign is that Democrats and liberals will attack her, saying she is basically a rural hick without any qualifications and that she has too many kids, etc. So far, it seems to be working for them. All over the liberal blogs I'm seeing jeering and condescension toward this woman. We need to be wary of calling her things like hick and hillbilly and saying that she is unqualified and that she has too many children: "Oh, and look, now her teenage daughter is pregnant." "Tsk, tsk, tsk", with a condescending shake of our superior heads. The bottom line is that many people in our country will automatically identify with her various narratives, especially the teenage daughter's pregnancy. The media is already revving up the Brittany Spears/Anna Nicole Smith engine as we speak. There are already pictures of the unfortunate teenage father all over the news. This type of coverage and jeering is going to engender sympathy in a vast swath of voters we cannot afford to alienate... again.
McCain's campaign manager is Karl Rove's chief protege, and Rove is in an "advisory" role only. Whatever. But their strategy goes like this. They pick this woman as the VP to try and steal the thunder of having the first African American candidate for President from the Democrats and also to get the Democrats to criticize her as unqualified and unsophisticated. They want us to pick on her because they can then turn around and hang the old "elitist" frame around our necks. They desperately want to go back to the "latte drinking, volvo driving, over-educated, snob, liberal" story-line and therefore rip the blue collar "Reagan-Democrats" and and the independents away from Obama. This is how they've been able to get people to vote against their own better interests again and again. Think I'm wrong? Just go take a look at Drudge with these thoughts in mind and see that we are playing right into their hands... again.
The best approach is to totally ignore this woman. Don't even mention her. We have more than enough material just dealing with McCain himself. After all, this is the election for President, the VP is unimportant, truly a side show. I know that McCain is an old old man and that the possibility that his VP choice will take the rains of power is very real, but we cannot afford to allow the Republicans to set the narratives in this election. This election is about the things Obama spoke about in his acceptance speech, not about Sarah Palin's daughters sex life.