WTF?!?!? (or Sarah Who?)

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I think that Republican’s and Democrats alike are having a similar moment today upon learning of John McCain’s vice-presidential announcement this morning. Who? What? Why? Her name is Sara Palin and she has been the governor of Alaska for a year and eight months. Before that she was mayor of a town of less than 10,000 which although she calls herself a ‘fiscal conservative’ (do these even exist anymore?) she left with $20 million in debt. McCain’s response to Obama’s wonderfully eloquent acceptance speech stomping him and the Repugnant-cans is to throw what’s being described by red and blue alike as a political hail-mary pass. But I ask: “At what? To where?” I think he just took the ball and threw it as long and far as he could down the field, in the wrong direction. While Republican’s were saying things like “Who?” and “I don’t know, I’ve never met her” this afternoon when asked for comment the rest of us were getting a crash course on a vice-presidential nominee we had never heard of.

Palin as Miss Wasilla, Alaska in 1984

The fact that nobody seemed to know anything about her, including those on her own side, seems like pretty strong evidence that McCain watched Barack Obama’s speech and convention last night, shit in his Depends, and desperately reached for the wildest wild card that he could play in order to first: draw attention away from a speech that pundits are calling masterful, brilliant, tough, confident and Republicans are comparing to Ronald Reagan (crazy, I know) and second: to frantically try to claim the mantle of change in an election where he is being portrayed as the incumbent in an environment deeply hostile to the current regime.

This leads me to ask: no, seriously, what was he thinking? Was he thinking that he would be able to swing some of the disgruntled Hillary supporters because his new running mate has a vagina? If this is the idea, not only will it not work but I can see it triggering a terrific backlash. First of all, Palin is the opposite of Clinton on policy positions. As someone who is pro-life, pro-gun, anti-environment (she’s against polar bears for god’s sake, didn’t she see those cute Coke commercials?) and vetoed solar, wind and coal initiatives as governor she is basically an evil anti-Clinton mirror twin from Bizarro World. Further she is a 44 year old former beauty queen political lightweight with zero, repeat, zero experience on the national scene. She is as far from Hillary as you can get and still be a female politician. The message I read from this from McCain to Hill’s supporters is: you’re women, she’s one of you, you’re all so blind and stupid that you won’t care that she’s diametrically opposed to everything Hillary fought for for years and years and endured terrible humiliation to get to, vote McCain. You might as well spray them with mace. Bonus negative million points: Hillary will be SO MAD about this that she is going to be back in this campaign spitting acid and SWINGING. So, way to go McCain. You did, I think, the only thing possible to motivate Clinton to campaign as hard as she possibly can for the man who beat her in the primaries.

Next: Age is officially on the table. The fact that McCain could, on his seventy second birthday, nominate a woman who is so deeply, clearly, dangerously unprepared to step in as commander in chief should he succumb to a fifth bout with cancer just illustrates to both sides how much McCain is willing to risk our national security and stop at nothing to win an election. And he accused Obama of being willing to lose a war to win an election? Are you kidding?

Lastly, McCain just picked up the experience stick he’s been beating Obama with all summer, really one of his few legitimate claims, no one can take away the fact that he’s been in Washington for 26 years, and broke it over his own head. By nominating a VP who is both younger, less experienced and also less known than Obama he’s effectively neutralized that argument for himself and his surrogates. The upside for him is that should he be elected he’s pulled an effective Bush-ist move in that absolutely no one will dare to assasinate him for fear that this woman will be running the country.

PS: to those of you are thinking: what is wrong with Matt Shadetek, why is he only talking about politics and writing these weird ranty essays and not talking about music? Well, sorry, this is what I’m thinking about right now and I’ll be damned if I can’t rant about in on my own blog. This is mainly because I feel so strongly that America needs to dump the Republicans and put Obama in the White House that I literally cannot shut up about it.

Oh and PPS: Fuck Daddy Yankee for endorsing McCain (another giant WTF?!?! with a biillion explanation points and question marks) and respect to Fat Joe for dissing him.  What a jackass!

16 Comments

  1. man , I feel you. such a wtf moment, that it defies reality. I hope you’re right about the backlash, but if Biden beats up on her too heavily in the debates we might see a different kind of backlash.

    Obama’s speech fell a little short for me as well. But I’d still vote for the guy twice, if I could.

    I’m nervous about this one. I’m not sur anyone knows what McCain;s game truly is with this pick. I’m hoping it’s just senility; the “hail Mary” you so rightly called it. We shall see.

  3. I don’t buy the Biden can’t punch on her thing. What like the Republican’s can’t punch on Nancy Pelosi?

    He’ll have to be a little more careful and not go directly at her personally but I think he could probably stand on his head through the debate and not even attack her and win.

    Also the VP debate is just not that important imho. More important is Biden ripping McCain for the next two months, which he will do well. Will she be an effective attack dog for McCain? It didn’t look like it from what I saw of her speech. What she’s going to hit Obama on? Experience? Energy? She might be able to sing the drill drill drill song but that hasn’t proven an effective issue as I can tell. I don’t buy the bounce with women and barring that she’s just a generic washington outsider who doesn’t bring much to the table. And I think her looks and being young only make more of an odd couple picture with McCain, I think it highlights his age.

  4. Having read the second link “An Astonishingly Arrogant V.P. Selection” I agree whole-heartedly. He hit the nail on the head. This is the real problem for McCain with this pick, not to mention that it is his first major executive decision, I’d say he blew it.

  7. McCain has a very good chance of winning (or stealing) this election. for the record. its a nightmare situation, but in this horrible nightmarish way McCain & Palin are what we Americans deserve.

    I think Matt makes the mistake of thinking that most voters think (about “the issues” or more generally)

    In other words, I guess *I* think things may well get a lot worse…….

  8. @ rupture…

    yeah, he could win… but the polling that really matters (state aggregates) says it’s in the bag… even the more conservative estimates at fivethirtyeight have obama up by 50+ electoral votes… but word on the pointing out that the average voter has doesn’t get informed about the crooks and liars… let alone get the raw (partisan) data at daily kos or media on media at hufpo.

    @ matt… yeah, what a longshot… and there are a lot of problems with sarah palin. and good point about the double standard with nancy pelosi… although i think it was part of mccain’s plan to put the not-very-pc biden up against a pr nightmare of being implicated in even the most remote sexism against palin (who seems to be really an anti-feminist, if anything…) hopefully mccain’s shoddy vetting process will come back to haunt him…

  9. oh yeah, sorry…

    state aggregate polling site here
    fivethirtyeight.com site here and correct 50+ to 30+ above…

    the reason those polls matter is that obama almost has enough to win just in his strong category, mccain has a lot farther to travel… his national numbers have never broken 50%, doesn’t lock up republicans the way obama does democrats… also for better or worse, the national poll is meaningless (except as it drives narrative) because of the electoral college, which obama is killing mccain in. word on the stealing elections, though…

  11. I’m loving P Diddy on this issue:

    “John you are bugging the f— you. I don’t even understand what planet you’re on now. This is the job to be the leader of the free world. No disrespect, I love ya, I want you to live to 110, but what if, God forbid, you got a running mate, you become President. Alaska? ALASKA? ALASKA? ALASKA? Come on, man. I don’t even know if there are any black people in Alaska. John, come on. Sarah [Palin]? What in the hell? ALASKA? You’re bugging the f— out. Sarah Palin, you ain’t ready to be vice president. ALASKA MOTHERF—-ER? What is the reality in Alaska? There aren’t even any crackheads in Alaska. There aren’t no black people in Alaska.”

    hahaha so true

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