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It's very apparent that picking Palin has made a huge difference. I was one of the minority (albeit sizeable minority) of DU'ers here who argued that Obama pick Sebelius for VP. I wasn't super vigorous about it but I was consistent and have a few OP's on record to support that. What I noticed in the primary season was that Hillary had a bulwark of voters that Obama just couldn't crack, mainly white women, and more specifically older white women. Primary after primary, state after state this held. It was not about "issues" or "Hillary's leadership" or her "experience", it was about identity and the sense of "we've waited long enough, it's our time". That's all fine and dandy, because not only was Hillary a symbol of women she also was a fighter for them on issues that directly affect them.
I know I will have /enraged a lot of DU'ers by now with the comments above. But in you heart of hearts, you know it to be just as true as the fact that Obama never would have won the primaries if it weren't for his superior gamesmanship within the caucases that nullified such a mentality to a certain point. I will concede that the vast majority of Hillary voters have stuck with Obama, but JUST ENOUGH of the female vote has gone over to the dark side for the main salient cause of identity politics. Other than gender, there couldn't be a candidate more diametrically opposed to Hillary Clinton in terms of experience, style, issues, and personal archetype.
It's also worth noting that there are multiple records (and no, I'm not going to link them here for the lazy people) where Mark Penn indicated their fall strategy involved pilfering Republican women to cross party lines on basis of gender.
Does this make women stupid and suggestable, just like sheep, voting with their gonads instead of their brains? No, not any more than men. Hell, the majority of Dem women and female Hillary voters will stick with Obama for intelligent reasons. However, there are just enough people out there, men and women alike who just don't have the foggiest clue of how the world works, what the issues are, or what's at stake. Mainly, this is due to poor education in America. Frankly, people don't get enough critical civics courses unless they go to secondary education, and even then civics can still be easily avoided. This built-in country-wide ignorance forces people to rely on heuristic thinking. People fall back on programmed memes or over-simplifying complex matters. So what happens is that a lot of women who don't realize how vital this election is in terms of issues just want to go with what gives them the best feeling and right now Palin is to them the Mavericky, plucky, PTA mom who's gonna show all those Washington fat cats what's what.
As Matt Damon says, (paraphrasing) "This is like some bad Disney Movie". Guess what Matt Damon, that was intentional. There's a lot of people out there that want this to play out like a Reese Witherspoon or Alecia Silverstone movie. We all know the plot: pretty girl who everyone thinks is a ditz dons a pair of nerdy glasses and shows the big boys who really is smart afterall once she saves the day.
Degrading Palin for being from a "small town" (which I hear a lot here, on Huffpo, and on places like Bill Maher)plays right into that script and for all the counter-productive things you could go after, this is one of the biggest. When you go after Palin for being from a "small town" you aren't disparaging her, you are disparaging small towns. And guess who actually puts people like George Bush in power. You guessed it, small towns. Look at any "Red America vs Blue America" map county by county and you will see the pattern emerge.
Small towns are ripe for picking off the low information working class female voter as they comprise a big portion of the work force and generally take the lower paying service jobs. Secretaries, office receptionists, fast food workers, light manufacturing line workers, nurse aids, clerical staff all tend to be the white "working class" tend to make less than the male dominated building trades, professional trades, and managerial jobs that are dominated by men. The disparities in rural America are high lighted by gender. Having a woman on the Republican ticket is going to tend to push a lot of "softly Democratic" women to flip that switch for Palin.
Again, it's not going to be in vast majorities, but it will be just enough. The effect will be that Palin and Clinton are interchangeable for them, not because of what they believe but because of what they represent.
It's too late to go back and pick Sebelius or Clinton (he shoulda picked Sebelius) but Biden is still a wise choice from a governance standpoint. Honestly, is probably the most qualified person in America to be President right now on the basis of sheer knowledge and mastery of the facts.
I just hope the Obama campaign and all that truly support him can cut through the identity politics and get enough people to realize this really is about issues and that the choice to make could not be more painfully clear.
I hope in the long run we do a better job of civics education in this country because we will eventually implode into further soft fascism if we don't.
(This is just a ramble of a post, I didn't have enough time to go back and edit it or clean it up. Sorry if it sucks).
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