When John McCain announced the half-term Governor of Alaska and former mayor of a city of a whopping 9,000 people as his running-mate, Democrats thought they saw a political piñata, and their eyes lit up.
Where to swing for first? Her pregnant daughter? Her alleged drug-abusing son? Her own marital indiscretions? How about the state trooper she had fired when he broke her sister’s heart? And hey…is that baby really hers?
Sure, Sarah Palin brings a host of questions with her to the general election. But whether it was a full-on setup or not, Democrats took the bait. In doing so, they forgot about every issue that was allowing them to pulverize John McCain in the months before.
They forgot about the housing crisis that McCain said didn’t even exist. They forgot about the simmering tensions with Iran after almost seven consecutive years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They forgot about rising unemployment, a floundering education system, a faltering economy, and a rural infrastructure that has deteriorated over the last eight years while George W. Bush ignored it. Instead, they went after Sarah Palin.
Democrats should have attacked Palin for two things, and two things only: her frightening lack of any kind of foreign policy experience, and more importantly, her stances that are so diametrically opposed to the interests of American women on the issues most important to them.
The simple truth is that Sarah Palin never should have been an advantage to McCain in drawing female voters, especially the disillusioned former Hillary backers. Forget, for a moment, that she lacks a Y chromosome. On any Republican male, her issue positions would have been those of one of the most anti-woman politicians in the country. Even the most successful female Republican officeholders have some kind of moderate stance on women’s rights issues.
Look at Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and even Palin’s fellow Alaskan, Senator Lisa Murkowski- all of them have voted to support women’s reproductive rights at some point or another, and some of them backed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (which was named for a woman who, after 19 years of labor at a tire plant, still made $6,000 less than the lowest-paid male employee). John McCain could have chosen any one of these women as his running mate if he truly wanted to demonstrate his commitment to women. But instead, he picked Palin, a woman whose positions are anything but moderate or pro-woman. McCain opted to go with the political option, duping American women into thinking that he supported their cause.
But McCain is only partly to blame. Democrats- and quite frankly, the media- took their eyes off the ball and jumped at the first sensational story to rear its ugly head. The only scandal Democrats should be focused on is that John McCain put a woman lacking the experience and qualifications for office a heartbeat away from the presidency because he thought it would help him in the short run. That’s not just scandalous, it’s downright irresponsible- and it shows exactly the kind of judgment that Americans do not want in the White House. And yet, the media and Democratic officials have been more concerned with the salacious details of Palin’s personal life. Just this week, a state party chair had to apologize for saying that Palin’s only relevant accomplishment was not having an abortion. Stupid. Get off Palin, get on the issues.
Democrats need to learn this, and learn it fast: they’re not taking shots at a piñata, they’re beating a dead horse. And in the meantime, John McCain and Sarah Palin are sharing a saddle as they ride off into the sunset. There are 54 days left in this election. The clock is ticking.
