McCain’s poll numbers didn’t stay up, and Palin ended up costing him a lot more votes than she brought in. EVERYBODY I know personally, at every point on the political spectrum, was simply flabbergasted at the Palin pick. People who had been engaging in serious debate re the Presidential election came to a grinding halt that day, because it was clear the election was as good as over. One friend at the office told me a couple of days later that he’d been at a business (banking/insurance) golfing event, where an executive he knew well had told him “I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, and I was absolutely positive I never would, but now I’m going to do it.”
At least in the educated/affluent segment of society, completely apart from political left/right leanings (and there’s plenty of both), *everybody* saw instantly that Sarah was a rank amateur and so clueless as to be outright dangerous as a possible POTUS (and with McCain’s age, that was a very serious prospect). Even before the reams of trailer-trashy stuff starting coming out (which didn’t take long), she just didn’t come across as someone who could even be qualified for a mid-level management job in the front office of a serious financial institution. She came across as ditzier and more clueless than the average secretary we were accustomed to dealing with, and frankly, apart from her quite recent election as Governor of Alaska, her resume looked a lot like that of the average secretary we were accustomed to dealing with — hiccuppy and unimpressive post-secondary education, no clear career path, etc.
Frankly I think a lot of people who would have voted for McCain simply stayed home. I’m an absentee voter (always in NYC weekdays, even though I’m also a Pennsylvania resident and registered to vote in PA) and I really struggled over it — seriously considered checking off one of the two fringe party candidates on the ballot (but despised both of them), seriously considered checking off Obama because having run his campaign brilliantly and with Biden on the ticket (whose politics I dislike, but who’s clearly an experienced pro), he appeared to be the best choice for a competent executive, seriously considered leaving the President/VP boxes blank, and ended up voting for McCain because 1) I felt sorry for the honorable ex-POW whose last shot at the Presidency had been pulled out from under him by some appallingly bad political advice, and 2) Obama was obviously going to win Pennsylvania anyway.
Nearly all the people who were “inspired” by Palin were going to vote Republican no matter what — not ONE of them was a potential Obama voter. Virtually nobody who was on the fence between McCain and Obama would have tipped over to McCain because Palin had joined the ticket. And tipping the McCain vs. Obama fencesitters was the only way McCain had a chance of winning. Anyone left-leaning enough to even consider voting for Obama over McCain, was going to be appalled by *everything* about Palin.
I think she’s completely finished as a national-level politician. She might have been able to salvage her political career if she’d gotten her act together and closely followed advice from solid, professional political advisers, starting right after the election. Instead she made a series of boorish and defensive media appearances and has managed to piss off pretty much everybody who has an influence at all in the Republican Party (and she’d already managed to piss off quite a lot of them during the campaign). And the endless stream of trailer trashy stuff emanating from her family obviously isn’t helping — it’s not that good, competent people can’t have trailer trashy relatives and daughters’ baby daddies, but there’s a conspicuous lack of anything ELSE emanating from her family circle. At this point, I think her political future in Alaska isn’t even secure.
You pray to Obama at night don’t you?
I have to disagree that “everyone in the educated/affluent segment of society saw Palin as a rank amateur.” Perhaps those in New York City, but certainly not the rest of the county.
You say that you voted for McCain because you “felt sorry for the honorable ex-POW whose last shot at the Presidency had been pulled out from under him by some appallingly bad political advice”. That’s not exactly a high endorsement for the guy. You don’t cite any policies he stood for or anything but feeling sorry for him. Yet you don’t seem to hold him accountable for any of the advisors he chose. Presidency’s don’t get pulled from people. The people that become president, Republicans and Democrats alike, have an intense drive to become president. The candidates who I saw as exceptions to that are Bob Dole and John McCain, both were old guys who spent years in the Senate and ran their campaigns as if the country owed them the presidency because of their years of service in the military as well as in government. Both ran against guys who had no military service, and both ran near times of military deployments by the US, so their military service should have been a plus. Neither had a real message other than some vague “I served, you owe me”. That doesn’t win elections. Unfortunately, in both cases, the other candidates in the primary were even less inspiring than they were.
You pray to reason and sanity every night, right
With all due respect, I suspect that your views may be colored by your having been in NYC. NYC Repubs tend to be more liberal in some ways.
‘EVERYBODY I know personally, at every point on the political spectrum, was simply flabbergasted at the Palin pick. People who had been engaging in serious debate re the Presidential election came to a grinding halt that day’
Reminds me somewhat of Pauline Kael’s statement about Richard Nixon’s landslide victory about how no one she knew voted for him.
“I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, and I was absolutely positive I never would, but now I’m going to do it.”
So your friend voted for Obama, a guy who has less executive experience than Palin? If and when the country goes down the commode, will your friend admit his mistake?
‘Even before the reams of trailer-trashy stuff starting coming out (which didn’t take long), she just didn’t come across as someone who could even be qualified for a mid-level management job in the front office of a serious financial institution. She came across as ditzier and more clueless than the average secretary we were accustomed to dealing with’
I suspect that you may thank the media for that.
‘At least in the educated/affluent segment of society, completely apart from political left/right leanings (and there’s plenty of both), *everybody* saw instantly that Sarah was a rank amateur and so clueless as to be outright dangerous as a possible POTUS’
Maybe that’s it right there. The reason why that aforementioned educated/affluent segment doesn’t like Palin is because she wasn’t “one of them”.