Palin - tough target for Obama? Biden?, page 1

I regard Palin largely as a gimmick candidate, not only because she is a woman but because she is so carefully chosen to match up against Obama's ticket.

She decided to keep a child, knowing that child would be born with Downs Syndrome- that gives her a huge sympathy card to play that will make a Washington insider like Biden seem like a mean old man if he tries to hammer her on her abortion views- so she's the Republican Veep who "can't be politely challenged" on a hotbutton issue that will charge the Republican base. During the VP debate, don't be surprised when she accuses Biden of suggesting that she should have murdered her son if he comes anywhere near her on abortion.

What's more her son is not only in the military, but enlisted on Sept 11 of last year and deploys to Iraq on Sept 11 of this year (talk about timing, eh?). To be honest, some strategists have got to be praying to god that her son gets killed in his first month over there. That's what you call an October Surprise. I won't go so far as to suggest that Dick Cheney and co would orchestrate such a thing, but admit it, most of you readers thought about that possibility the minute I said he was deploying on 9/11, didn't you?

She's even got a spring-loaded pseudoscandal poised to bite the Dems bad if they go after it. My initial look into it says that she almost certainly did fire her Public Safety Commissioner for refusing to help her retaliate against her ex brother in law. But it also looks like her ex brother in law was a rogue cop well on his way to killing somebody, under the full protection of the Alaska State Troopers and the troopers' union. Imagine that- the biggest chink in her armor coming in turns out to be an opportunity for the Republicans to talk about how much they hate unions and at the same time accuse the democrats of being soft on domestic violence.

This woman is some kind of a riddle to attack, even for a hard hitting veteran like Biden. The initial impulse is to say they have to be very nice to her and just say she's not experienced enough- but they can't do that without validating attacks on Obama's experience in the minds of independents. Not only that, but it wouldn't be a good enough argument. Lack of experience seems to be what people throw at you when they can't figure out what's wrong with your ideas (or in this case, don't dare speak it out loud).

But make no mistake, she's not ENTIRELY window dressing. She is willing to fire people wholesale to get her way. In that sense she would be able the keep the cabinet functioning under the unitary executive theory, through fear, without coming off as a grumpy old man like Cheney and drawing a lot of heat for it, and without taxing the reserves of an aging president with any infighting that may arise in his administration.

That may be the key. It falls on Biden, as Palin's opposite number and as the older statesman in Obama's camp, to push Palin in a diplomatic but unrelenting fashion until she becomes flustered and gets aggressive. This country does still tollerate certain levels of sexism, and the news media will characterize such an event as "the claws coming out", at which point Palin will at least for a moment cease to be a mother and become a woman in the stereotyping vision of sometimes sexist culture.

That change in perception, from mother to woman, which will come the moment she is anything but gentle, nurturing and ever-so-subtly submissive, will make sexual inuendo and stereotypes about emotionalism, etc all fair game. That's a unique problem for Palin over Hillary Clinton, because her base is less politically correct, and she doesn't have a tough career woman image. Hillary Clinton never was really percieved as a mom (biolgical facts aside). Hillary Clinton came across as a bit of a battle axe, (for lack of other appropriate terms beginning with the letter "B") and it was like, 'well, what are you gonna do, she's one of those educated liberal feminists'. Clintons problems can be percieved by some as having as much to do with being a liberal as they have to do with being a woman, which naturally reduced the turnoff effect it had on Democrats. Palin has no such luck. No forgiving base, and no other traits to blame it on if she goes aggressive, because she's not really a politician or a liberal femenist, or even a big city girl.

I'm not saying Biden has to lower himself to marshalling sexism against her. But I am saying that if he does the only thing that you can do with a political opponent who can't be safely attacked (regardless of gender), which is question her without sharp criticism until she paints herself into a corner, the favorable result will be even stronger than it would be if she was a man.

That's the fatal flaw to Palin as I see it.