I’m a McCain supporter, but not necessarily a Palin supporter. More importantly, I think I’m in political love with whoever decided to try the Palin adventure; it was ballsy, it was just dripping with panache, and it made the news networks, even those who had been fawning over Barack Obama, moist with anticipation of an election they could win prizes for covering.
In the past seven years, a lot has been learned about assymetric warfare; the type of warfare where one force uses massively differing firepower and tactics in order to challenge the warfighting assumptions of the opposing force. We’re learning more about it now, as the imiscible styles of Barack and Sarah begin to glance off one another.
But that’s not the clever part; Sarah Palin should not even be part of the Barack Obama debate; she’s a hick hockey mom from the icy wastes, who, as a candidate for Vice President, should by rights be relegated to taking Biden up on the finer points of Neil Kinnock impersonation. She isn’t in the same intellectual league as Barack, and she is nowhere near a decent candidate for the person one heartbeat away from the football and the launch codes. As a McCain supporter, I can be honest and say I think she’s god-awful.
The problem for the Obama crowd is the sense they have of something slipping away from them, and the disillusionment occassioned by their apparent inability to say what a lot of their supporters are thinking; Palin should get back in the kitchen, and cook something nice for that frail thin husband of hers, and stop pretending she has what it takes to lead the free world. Every rock they throw at Palin makes them feel better, and most of them are legitimate plays in the race for the Observatory, but not one of them has done any damage whatsoever to her credibility with her own party. For instance, did she force rape victims to pay for their own forensics kits?
Probably, but the only thing capable of harming her from that story from the people likely to vote for her anyway would have been if she’d mentioned that abortion was legal in the state. She can only be hurt by suggesting she’s a flipflopper or less right-wing than she claims; that would be troublesome for the incredible backtrack twins on the Dem side.
By splitting up Obama and Biden to their own separate campaign stops, they haven’t worked out yet that this is spreading them thin rather than spreading a wide net; while they do that, the nationals are able to report the double whammy of the old guy from vietnam and his MILF wife saying compact, big, exciting things about the future and change. And Biden tried out a new life story. Is he on witness protection or something? It’s the third life story I’ve heard for him in my young political career.
To rebuild the momentum Obama and Biden had, they need to concentrate their fire on John McCain, and do their best to either ignore the prig in lipstick or hive off attacks on her to prroxies, preferably white female proxies. Only concentrated fire on the Presidential opponent can yield results at this stage, and it’s astounding it hasn’t happened yet. It’s getting too close, guys!
Anyway, back to assymetric warfare. Every time the Obama/Biden campaign references something Palin has said, they chuck at least a cherry bomb, at most a hand grenade, into their own tent; it reinforces the GOP base by saying nasty things about that hawt bespectacled career mom, and replays the message of the GOP video ‘As their poll numbers fall, they’ll try to destroy her’. Nobody likes the army that shoots the human shield. It’s unfair, it will make Dems angry and it’s no way to win the battle for leadership of the free world, but it’s great gameplay.
That’s how they’ll lose.
