It turns out that she was probably put on the ticket to attract the votes of all those gun totin', god fearin' non arugula eatin', red necks....
But — was Palin really put on the ticket as a babe magnet? That’s only the cover. The real mission is class, not sex. The Obama campaign may have missed the true nature of the threat. Sarah Palin — like Joe Biden — was chosen in large part because she could appeal to working-class voters, who by rights should be voting for the Democrats’ politics of the trough in this economic downturn. Did you hear how much applause Palin got the other night when she mentioned that her husband was a member of the Steelworkers Union? The GOP wants its Reagan Democrats back!
Even the subtle difference between the newly hot “hockey moms,” and the “soccer moms” of yore has to do with class. Soccer is played in the leafier suburbs, and the moms drive Lexus SUVs. Hockey is grittier (and field hockey doesn’t count).
Those blue-collar guys and gals in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (three states mentioned by Palin in her acceptance speech), were put off Obama during the primaries because of his caricature of their God-and-guns culture, his penchant for arugula (and all that that implies), and his general elitism. And maybe race.
But maybe race per se wasn’t the primary reason. Maybe the problem is the somewhat alien background — the Kenyan father, the Indonesian youth, the runaway mom. Maybe it is a little puzzling how this man went from total outsider to the Harvard Law School national elite, collecting his $200 without passing Go . . . as they have not been able to do. That’s hard to relate to if you have lived in a town where your dad worked at the plant his whole life, and you were going to do that too. But now the plant has closed, and you need a plan so you can support the family and work for the next 20 years.
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