Palin Doesn’t Get It

November 12, 2008

Here’s 60 seconds on why I think Rachel Maddow is more likely to be relevant in 2012 than Sarah Palin:

Palin, who first came out against community organizers (well done, Gov!) sees bloggers as the enemy, and tries to paint them all with this caricature-brush: livin’ in your parents’ basement, in your pajamas, bloggin’ some gossip.

Palin doesn’t get it.

Well, there’s a lot she doesn’t get, but here’s one example:

She doesn’t get that the Main Stream Media (or “MSM” as it is now all-too-often abbreviated) is here to stay.

They’re a powerful force.

One candidate used that force in this election.

One did not.

The one who did is now “measuring the drapes” for 1600 Penn. Ave. (Oh, and he has an amazing website at Change.gov)

The other is not.

There’s a ton of room for lies, deceit, gossip, etc in the “blogosphere” (another made up word I loathe).

But there’s also a lot of fact-checking.

There’s a lot of energy.

There’s a lot of eyeballs.

While McCain and Palin kept dismissing the polls, mockingly saying “They forgot to let the people vote”, Five Thirty Eight.com turned out stunningly accurate predictions down to tenths of a percent as to how much of the vote Obama and McCain would get.

Not ABC. Not NBC. Not CBS. Not CNN. Not MSNBC. Not even the Republican News Network (aka Fox News).

A website.

Palin is trying to pass herself off as this folksy “aw shucks” candidate.

Meanwhile, the truth is that she has abused her power in office within the first few months of being in office.

She sold an airplane — at a loss, and then just used a different one to fly herself around.

She claims she said “thanks but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere, when what she actually did was support it, then when it became unpopular, she switched sides and went against it, and then she kept the money.

She is as much a politician as anyone you are likely to meet.

McCain / Palin tried to pull off “OUTRAGE!” at Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comment, except that there was video footage of McCain using the same phrase several times over and over again.

Palin says that the Harry Potter books weren’t even out when she was city manager (or whatever) and accused of trying to get books banned….except that 4 of the 7 books were out when she was in that office.

McCain / Palin tried to run a pre-web campaign, where the only news cycle was from 6-7pm and 11-11:30pm.

They tried to run a campaign that could only exist back before there were ways to fact check, before there were easy ways of disseminating information.

And lest you become too haughty about where your political news comes from: don’t forget it was The Inquirer which broke the news of John Edwards’ affair.

For Palin to win in 2012, for any Republican to win in 2012, they are going to have to completely re-think how they run the campaign, how they get their message out, and what that message is.

(It would also be nice if they had something to offer other than “The Democrats are bad evil people with bad evil friends who might be terrorists, socialist, marxist, communist, fascist, tax-raising, puppy killin’ mean jerks who will take your guns!!!”)

It’s going to be more and more difficult for them to get away with the old style fear-mongering, because there are too many ways to refute a message that isn’t truthful.

The problem is that Palin is complaining about being treated unfairly, when she gave no interviews, released no medical records (despite saying she would), and basically trying to cloak herself in a shroud of secrecy.

Then she tried to turn around and claim that we didn’t know who the “real” Obama was… when the truth was we had no idea who Sarah Palin was.

By 2012, we’ll know a lot more. The spotlight will get a lot more intense, Gov. Palin. You might just want to think about whether or not you can really stand to face all that light, because so far all you’ve been trying to do is shovel darkness.

I watched almost zero nightly news programs during the campaign.

I bought no newspapers or magazines.

I watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and later added Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

(By the way, you can watch all 4 of those shows in their entirety online. For free.)

I saw a lot of YouTube clips.

I read a lot of blogs, and a lot of newspaper websites.

I clicked a lot of links on Twitter.

Someone started a Sarah_Palin account on Twitter. I’m not sure if it was official or not (Obama’s clearly was official) but they mostly made statements with no link, no followup. For example:

Numbers show that truly Ohio is the Buckeye State and not an ACORN state ;)

Really? What numbers are those?

By the way, that was posted at 9:21pm on Nov 2nd. Oops.

Here’s another:

Obama speechwriter Wendy Button switched to McCain b/c Democrats under Obama are belittling working-class people like Joe the Plumber

Really? Where’s a story I can read about that?

When you make statements like that, statements with no corroboration, all you are doing is speaking to those who already want to believe you.

There are several of these pro-Palin twitter accounts, none of them seem to be “official” and most of the ones that I saw posted very little by way of verifiable stories, and mostly just threw out these statements hoping that people would read them and say “Oh, ok, I believe you.”

Compare that to the Obama Twitter feed which is full of links for more information. When statements are made, they are messages of encouragement or updates on where he was or what he was doing.

Obama got it.

Anyone who thinks it was just part of some strategy, checkout his new website Change.gov.

It’s a whole new ball game.

And Palin best figure out how the game is played if she wants another turn at bat.

  • http://sflovestory.com Holden

    So glad you pointed out the Twitter disparity. I kept asking myself, are they even LOOKING at the “front page”?

    First she can’t stand the mainstream media, and now she can’t stand the “underground” media.

    I think what she can’t stand is criticism and her inability to market herself.

    Winners don’t look at what went wrong and blame others (people, media, whatever), winners look at what went wrong and figure out how to change it (like the Democratic Party fucking FINALLY did with Obama). This is something all successful people do without even thinking about it. She (and they, the GOP) are thinking too much about it…or maybe she’s just not really thinking. I can hazard a guess on that one.

    Here’s hoping we will not see her in 2012 (cringing just thinking about it).

    Great points here. It’s not just about Palin, it’s about how to get what you want. And a lesson in organization I hope the pro-marriage group starts getting into their (our) heads post haste.

    Sorry to ramble.

    xx - Holden

  • http://nevali.net Mo

    I’m not from the US, but—like much of the (at least western) world—I paid attention to this election. Unsurprising, really; US policy has a huge bearing on how the rest of us live, whether it’s through direct action (W’s New Crusades) or the expectation of action (Europe and sections of the Middle East second-guessing what the US may do).

    For probably the first time, my sources for information were pretty much exactly the same as those used by people who did vote: YouTube, blogs, Twitter, FiveThirtyEight. I read news reports alongside personal accounts; rebuttals and commentary from random individuals and well-known celebrities alike; I knew who Joe the Plumber was at the same time as everybody else (including the bits the McCain campaign would have preferred not to be true).

    For the first time ever I was able to come to an informed decision about which way I wanted an election to fall. In previous years I knew that I didn’t want George W. Bush to take office (and had a feeling of creeping dread when he did, which was only renewed when he was re-elected), but I wasn’t hugely convinced by the alternatives (in large part because I didn’t know enough about them). This time around, I knew both why I wanted Obama/Biden, and why I didn’t want McCain/Palin.

    For the first time, this election wasn’t just in the hands of the people, but it was global. While that’s not a big deal for last week’s by-election in Glenrothes, it is when it comes to electing the commander-in-chief of what is arguably still the world’s greatest superpower.

  • http://www.moltz.net/~john/blog John Moltz

    That’s exactly what her supporters do, too. I hate to get into it with these people because there is simply no reward - they don’t care about truth or accuracy. I’d read their feeds (and, for the sake of accuracy you can look at ladylatasia and toddsullivan on Twitter) and they’d haul off with some statement that was not true, provide no link and then never correct themselves.

    It’s identity politics in action. Because they’ve identified with McCain and Palin, the rest doesn’t matter. You defend your team, right or wrong.

    Liberals do the opposite to a maddening degree. Already there are bloggers jumping all over Obama not because of decisions he’s made but because of “signs” that he’s doing it wrong already and not being liberal enough. I’m all for holding him accountable and my concern about him from early on in the campaign is that he’s not the liberal agent of change that many want him to be, but the guy’s not even in office yet. Give him a minute to warm up.

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