In which I pessimistically call the 2008 Election for McCain

I think it’s over folks. I really do. You heard it right here before anywhere else: McCain will win this election to the detriment of everything I hold dear. Who will be responsible for this tragedy? Who can we blame?

The answer is liberal men and pundits. McCain, by choosing Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, will cause the most vocal members of Obama’s campaign and the Democrats to split the entire party in two. The only way this catastrophe can be averted is if liberal pundits realize that their mischaracterization and disdain for their monolithic idea of female voters, as blinded by the vision of anything with a vagina, will do nothing but drive actual women to seriously doubt the sincerity of Obama and his supporters’ claims of being for women’s issues.

I say that this is kind of proactive self-evaluation is currently impossible for the likes of male liberal pundits. The Democrats show no sign of ever regarding the concerns of women as the lynchpin of their party. My recent posts on Obama’s dismissal of a serious threat to reproductive rights and his pandering to evangelicals should be enough evidence. They are more content to tell us how to vote, blackmail us with visions of Roe overturned, and accuse us of stupidity than ask us to vote for them by addressing our concerns with something other than censorship and straw-man misconstructions of our goals.

McCain is not stupid. If Bush can win two elections with little political maneuvering, I think it is entirely likely that McCain can do the same given the fact that he has Obama on the defensive, and he seems to know exactly how to get liberals to put their foots in their mouths.

I am by no means an expert on politics. But I can see clear as day how McCain’s nomination of Palin came to pass, why he chose her, and what exactly he wishes to accomplish. McCain’s choice for a running mate was probably cemented a long time ago, or at least the motivations for such a bold move were clear if he had not already decided on Palin. McCain had already put Obama on the offensive for months about his “inexperience”. Oddly enough, the average voter is extremely dissatisfied with the status-quo, which would lend to the fact that they probably would, honestly, prefer someone with less ties to Washington over someone firmly entrenched in the old partisan politics. Obama, due to his actual inexperience, failed to communicate that counterpoint to the voters.

McCain specifically framed it as “inexperience” so that he could draw attention to his long political legacy and Obama’s relative anonymity before the Democratic primaries, while he, of course, gained voter confidence in his ability and simultaneously courted the old Washington elite for campaign donations. To say, however, that those were his only goals would be to be simplifying the issue.

At first, I could honestly say that I thought that McCain’s jab at Obama’s inexperience was just run-of-the-mill mudslinging. However, McCain’s nomination of Governor Palin suddenly revealed his purpose to me, when I was unable to see it before.

McCain specifically put Obama on the defensive so that he could maneuver in relative anonymity while the nation watched Obama betray his slogan of “Change” by agreeing to debate for the first time in an evangelical church, emphasizing his religion—while liberal and moderate voters express their dissatisfaction with the erosion the separation of church and state—, and then picked a running mate that was firmly entrenched in the party politics of Washington.

McCain had placed Obama exactly where he wanted him. Now, McCain could nominate a little-known centrist Republican from Alaska as his running mate to undermine Obama’s reputation for change, and re-invent himself, yet again, as the political maverick he was once painted as. Now that he had amassed plenty of donations from the Washington status-quo, he was free to abandon their support while simultaneously getting Obama to put himself in a position where he appeared closer to the Washington elite, whom are responsible for the mess of the last eight years, than McCain himself.

However, that is not the end of the story. Lest we forget, Palin is a woman. Unlike Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, who claims that McCain’s choice is disrespectful of women because it paints them as monolithic and blinded by anyone with a vagina, I do not think that McCain actually hopes to pick up women voters solely by the nomination of a woman. In fact, I think he wants the media to think that so that his real motivations can be concealed.

His scheme to gain women voters is nowhere near as straight-forward as that, and much more ingenious. McCain knows that the loudest and most vocal women voters are those who place things like abortion rights at the top of their list of pet issues. Both McCain and Palin are anti-choice, and McCain is not stupid enough to believe that simply putting a woman on the ticket will be enough to sway women who vote Democrat because the Democrats are stronger on women’s issues. Like Cara at The Curvature said, McCain himself has revealed that he is blatantly misogynist, and women are not likely to forget that point.

Palin herself is not what will undermine the traditional trend of women voting Democrat. She is just a target for the sexist media, who is already gearing up their new bigoted slurs that were temporarily placed in a box after Clinton lost. But unlike Obama, McCain will defend his running mate. He will decry the sexist media, because now they are presumably working against him instead of for him with their past slander of Clinton.

But, again, that’s not what’s really going on.

If the media gears up the sexist attacks against Palin (which they already have) and McCain does not stand idly by like Obama did, he will put serious doubts in the minds of those who believe that Obama is stronger on women’s issues (my disclaimer: he is, but marginally so). What will only cement his win is when liberal pundits, whom have a history of sexist slurs for female politicians, declare Palin fair game, even fairer than Clinton, because she is their political foe and a woman. McCain specifically chose Palin over other conservative women because she is young and conventionally attractive. This will compound the sexism slung at her as liberal pundits inevitably crack jokes about her age, and “fuckability”. As already uttered by a liberal male contact in my political sphere:

Sarah Palin is an attractive and strong woman with five kids one has down syndrome. She is the governor of Alaska and also I would have sex with her.

Palin was chosen specifically because just about every facet of her history is an easy target for misogynists. Conservative pundits, notoriously and blindly loyal, will probably keep their silence. Liberal pundits, however, will inevitably comment, especially negatively, on her:

1) Age: McCain, 72, is so much older than Palin, 44, that two of his children are older than than her. Liberal pundits, even the female Wonkette, will and have made cracks about how, standing next to McCain, she looks a lot like the traditional gold-digging woman who manipulates an older man with her sexuality to ride his coat-tails.

2) Physical Appearance: Palin won a beauty pageant in her hometown to become Miss Wasilla, was a runner up in the Alaskan state pageant, and was featured on the cover of Vogue last year, unashamed of her status of governor and the proud owner of breasts. I surmise that statements of how people would like to fuck her, much like the one quoted above, will be issued daily as if they were serious news or political commentary.

3) Children: Palin has five children, the oldest in the army and the youngest born earlier this year with Down Syndrome. People have already speculated that Palin, because she is a woman, should be at home mothering and taking maternity leave instead of accepting the VP nod. Expect other liberal pundits to slam Palin for daring to go into politics instead of being a dutiful housewife.

4) Husband: Sarah Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, has ties to BP oil, whom he worked for, as a laborer, for twenty years. Nevertheless, apparently both her and her husband are outspoken against oil abuses in Alaska, and for increased taxation of oil. However, her husband also recently went on leave from his job to reduce conflict-of-interests between his employment and her political office and to support their family:

At home, Todd Palin takes care of the cooking, the bills and other domestic paperwork, in addition to driving the kids to extracurricular activities like basketball and soccer, according to his wife. He divides much of his time between Wasilla, where Track is recovering from shoulder surgery, and the capital in Juneau, where the Palin daughters are in school… “There is no way I could have done this job without his tremendous contributions to the home life. He’s able to keep it organized, like a well-oiled machine.”

I am waiting for someone to make some comment about how she emasculates him because she’s the primary earner while he is “her bitch” at home.

Palin, believe it or not, is probably a decent person and a fair politician. Although she is a Republican and, thus, supports their deplorable stances on women’s rights, I would say that I prefer her a million times over almost any other Republican I can name off-hand. As a feminist, I cannot use gender-specific character attacks against her without compromising my entire ideology. In fact, I feel obligated to defend her. Because the Republican ticket has a woman, and the Democratic ticket does not, this again will play neatly into McCain’s hands.

Regardless, as the election moves forward, pundits will be so blinded by her gender that the entire liberal party will be so focused on the fact that she has a vagina that they completely neglect to comment on her actual policies, and perhaps, neglect McCain’s as well.

This absolutely benefits McCain. If Obama chose to run his campaign mostly or only on the issues, I surmise he would win by a landslide. There simply are not enough people in America who actually like the status-quo who would defend it when McCain regurgitates it. Obama, because he actually is inexperienced came out of the primaries weak and continues to defend himself rather than go on the offense. For this reason, he will lose. He has appointed Biden, who makes comments about race and gender, to be his attack dog. He lets misogynist liberal pundits like Olbermann do his dirty work without a peep. Obama has outsourced his offensive team to the media, presumably so he can pull off the “nice guy” with his messiah charm. Then, he lets McCain back him into a corner when put on the defensive so that Obama does exactly what he wants him to, and McCain comes out smelling like roses or with an advantage (like Biden) that Obama unknowingly granted.

When it comes to campaigning, McCain obviously, despite his slow start, has the advantage. He held his seats for Arizona in the Senate and Congress for 26 years, and won his re-election campaigns in my state with considerable margins each time. He’s campaigned for the Presidency before. McCain, despite cracks at his age, knows exactly what he is doing. His overwhelming historical popularity in my state should be evidence enough that, given an inch, McCain takes the entire miles-long road to the governmental position he wants with considerable ease.

And Obama hasn’t just given him an inch, he’s given him a yardstick.

McCain, by nominating Palin, is not courting women voters in the way the news would like you to believe. Rather, he is whipping the entire nation into such a frenzy of attacks, defenses, and sexism that nobody will pay attention to the issues and women, half of the entire population, will wind up so angry at the Democratic party for leveling misogyny at Clinton and then Palin, ignoring their issues, letting their pundits slander them with cries of “Clintonistas!” and “Hilltards!”, and demanding that they vote for them—blackmailing them with accusations of making the Democrats lose, their stupidity, and the specter of Roe‘s reversal—that women will throw their hands up in disgust and vote for McKinney, vote for McCain, or not vote at all.

Obama will lose. He does not know how to manipulate the media to quiet his “defenders” that would chase the people more likely to vote for him than white men into the arms of a third party, the enemy, or voter apathy. He lets McCain put him exactly where he wants him. He says one thing and does the other. He panders to the right while alienating the left. Instead of defending his wife’s positions, he silences her and throws his pastor under the bus. He nominates the one Democrat so incompatible with his cry for “Change” that he winds up looking like a hypocrite. He talks endlessly about empty slogans and religion and his personal life and fails to communicate the issues.

In November, McCain and Palin will take the White House, aided by Obama’s actual inexperience, liberal pundits, sexism, voter machine fraud, and the daily occurrence of Biden putting his foot in his mouth.

You heard it here first.

---

Update: Well, that didn’t take long. Thanks for proving my fucking point Bill Maher with your opening remarks about the “Maverick and the MILF”. I hope you enjoy your shit sandwich when the Democrats lose. Thanks for nothing asshole.