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:
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.