Hurricane Sarah
Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) vice-presidential pick of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) a little more than two weeks ago and has mattered in this election cycle more than any in my memory. What was initially seen as a cheap trick designed to lure Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) voters away from the Democrats and to the Republicans, is now being viewed as as stroke of genius that caught the campaign of Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) completely off guard. The McCain-Palin ticket can credibly position themselves as reformers while painting the Obama-Biden ticket as an "inside-the-beltway, conventional wisdom, more-of-the-same" ticket. The vast middle of American -- where elections are typically won or lost -- will probably agree with this assessment.
Indeed, we are already starting to see a siginicant shift in this "independent" demographic to the McCain-Palin ticket in terms of polling data. What happens next? As soon as Obama starts losing, watch for democrat constiuency groups to start peeling away from the coalition and start blaming the other coalition partners impending loss. College students -- the enthusiastic shock troops of teh Obama campaign in the early going -- will be less enthused and migrate back to traditional colligiant pasttimes like football games and keggers. The fasr left Netroots crowrd will scream that Obama is losing because he "abandoned" his base by picking the conumate Washington insider in Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE). Working class Catholics -- so-called Reagan Democrats -- will slowly drift over to the McCain-Palin camp because of their distrust of his bona fides regarding his committment to mainstream American Christian values. This will Left the Obama-Biden ticket with only the hardcore left and African Americans as parts of their coalition, which is not enough to carry the whole nation.
While there is still a lot of election to go, its my contention that this will increasingly look like a rout. Then, I suppose, everybody who didn't vote for the freshman senator from Illinois, will be branded a racist.
Oh well.
