On Thursday night, Barack Obama addressed the United States of America for the first time as the official nominee from the Democratic party for the office of the President. And for about twelve hours, his speech was the biggest news story in the country.
And then it wasn't anymore. As soon as John McCain announced on Friday his running mate would be Sarah Palin, Republican Governor from Alaska, Obama's speech became very, very old news.
The exact fallout from this announcement isn't known yet, but as I'm writing this, less than a day after Obama's speech, there is not one story about his speech prominently featured on the Web site of the New York Times. A good portion of the Democrats in my sphere, though, are writing this off as just an attempt on McCain's part to pander to the supporters of Hillary Clinton who may be looking a reason to vote for anyone other than Obama.
The thinking is that any Democrat with half a brain will be able to see that Palin's politics are entirely different than Clinton's. No self-respecting Dem would allow themselves to be sucked in by these tactics, the logic goes.
And the logic's right. But this isn't a move aimed at currying the favor of pro-Clinton Democrats. Taking that stance neglects the bigger picture, one that could easily sink the reputation of the Democratic Party in this country for the next twenty years.
Palin's candidacy serves three purposes: a rallying point for the conservative base of the Republican Party, a direct attack on Obama's message of change, and a full-frontal assault on the idea that the Democrats are the party more in tune with "women's issues."
Traditional conservatives in the Republican party haven't seen eye to eye with McCain for most of this election cycle. Too liberal, too mainstream, whatever the reasons, they weren't picking up what he was putting down. Until he brought Palin into the picture, forgoing the rumored Romneys and Liebermans to reach into his hat and pull out a prototypical conservative: lifetime member of the NRA, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, mother of five, including Track, who joined the Army on September 11 of last year, and Trig born mere months ago with Down Syndrome, a fact she knew before giving birth, thanks to genetic testing. Her husband's an oil man, they both ride snowmobiles and ice fish. McCain could not have picked a better candidate for conservatives if he had the chance to create one from scratch.
At the very least, McCain's choice is pandering to the conservatives, not the Democrats, and to look at it the other way misses the picture. It isn't about giving liberals a reason to jump ship, it's about giving conservatives a way to assuage any guilt they may have for voting for a presidential candidate who doesn't meet their standards.
Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency also upsets the visual picture the Obama camp had been expecting. Before Thursday, everyone thought juxtaposing images of the two tickets would create a very obvious piece of visual rhetoric: The Republicans, with two white males, would represent business as usual, while the Democrats, running a ticket helmed by an African-American would represent the future.
The ticket of McCain and Palin has turned that logic on its head. To steal a metaphor from the world of Poker, they may not have raised the bet laid down by the Obama camp, but they have definitely called in a position the Democrats expected them to fold.
Doing a quick head count, both sides have a candidate who represents an underrepresented population of the country, and both sides have an old white guy. Not what the Democrats expected.
And perhaps the biggest problem facing the Democrats lies in exactly which underrepresented population the Republican ticket now represents. The Dems have traditionally been the party that claimed to best stand up for the issues important to women, and the Republicans now stand a very real chance of being the first party to elect a woman to an office of this magnitude.
This could not come at a worse time for the Democrats. The party had a woman in the running for the nomination, but looked elsewhere when the chips were down. Obama had the chance to run with the same woman as his candidate for vice president, and when the chance came, he picked a 65 year old white man.
No, liberal feminist women aren't going to be swayed into voting for McCain just because his partner on the ballot is a woman. But this election isn't going to be about "liberal feminists." Expect a campaign based on redefining and re-imagining feminism to focus on the idea that being empowered doesn't mean avoiding having children or having the right to an abortion, but having the strength and skill to both and, most importantly, having the opportunity to do so. Expect the following point to be underscored over and over and over again: When it came time to put up or shut up, the Republicans were willing to give a woman the chance to serve in the second-highest post in the executive branch of the United States Government.
The Democrats had that chance and more, and they respectfully passed. Twice.
In her speech accepting the nomination for Vice President, Palin mentioned Clinton by name. “Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."
Palin replaces Clinton's "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" with a new brand of "feminism," one that is entirely paletable, if not desirable, to the moderates and conservatives in this country who have been scared away from feminism by images of women with shaved heads and flannel shirts making out at Ani DiFranco concerts. The message is simple: Hillary and the radicals may have gotten us this far, but to get the ball across the goal line, to finally bust through that glass ceiling, it might not be a bad idea to put on a skirt. If McCain and Palin win, that's the message that's going down in the history books, folks, and the Dems should just pack it in and head home.
Palin's candidacy is by no means a death knell for the Obama campaign. McCain and Palin did, however, just claim the first round, conserving energy and blocking punches before unloading with a haymaker no one saw coming just before the bell.
If the Democrats don't want the fight to get away from them, they've got to answer the bell swinging for the fences. To assume that picking Palin is just an effort to court a ridiculously small portion of the Democratic party is to walk back to the center of the ring, hands by your waist, begging the Republicans to throw everything they've got right at your jaw.
