Sarah Palin might be a shrewd choice for the McCain ticket, but it still kind of makes me sad. I take it as a sign that the McCain of 2000—the reformer-centrist who’s comfortable breaking ranks with his party—is gone for good.
Why that depresses me is that McCain is absolutely the moderate in this race, but he stuffed that aspect of himself down so deep to win the primaries (as did Romney) that he’s going to have to completely reinvent his image to pick up the moderate votes in November.
The meme that I’m picking up from liberal friends right now is that a vote for McCain is a vote for four more years of George W. Bush. Have they forgotten that, as recently as 2004, McCain was entertaining the thought of running AGAINST Bush as Kerry’s veep on a bi-partisan ticket? That as recently as February, the conservative punditocracy was horrified at the thought that McCain might get the nomination? (Ann Coulter said she’d sooner vote for Hillary, because Hillary’s more conservative.) That explains why his pandering to the right over the past few months (well, the past year) has been so intense. Intense enough to turn off the moderates that he would normally appeal to, and to open the door for Obama to steal them away, even though Obama is as liberal a candidate as we’ve ever had in a general election.
You wouldn’t know that from Obama’s brilliant DNC speech, though. He’s going to slash federal programs, cut taxes for 95% of the country, and jump-start a green US auto industry! Recess will be 15 minutes longer, and the cafeteria will serve pizza every day! Obama’s already got his base locked up, so he’s free to “run to the middle” in a way that McCain’s not. The irony is that the middle is populated by socially liberal, fiscally conservative voters…the opposite of George W. Bush, but a good match with the McCain that ran in 2000 and that might have run on a bipartisan ticket in 2004.
In any case, the fact that I still don’t know who I’m voting for in August means I’d be OK with either one (for once, it’s not a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich).
Some geeky videographer has WAAAAY too much time on his hands. But this is one of the coolest viral videos I’ve seen.
