2008 Election

Moratorium on Palin

There are 10,000 posts I’d like to write about Sarah Palin, and I’m just as fascinated as the next political junkie by her every move, her brand of feminism, female ambition, comparisons to HRC, why she fired the librarian, whether her husband is an emasculated SAHD, etc. But I’ve decided to talk about all those things in December, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden are picking out drapes in the White House.

As many have correctly argued this week in our post-convention stupor: John McCain is the Republican candidate! Tempting as it is to turn our great media outlets into Us Weekly rags and watch Sarah Barracuda’s dramatic life play out like a long lost episode of Britney and KFed’s “Chaotic,” we have a very, very important election to win.

As Howard Wolfson noted in The New Republic yesterday in a post dismissing the notion of a Palin-HRC “cat fight” on the trail:

Secondly, and most importantly, Democrats are running against John McCain, not Sarah Palin.  Running against Gov. Palin instead of Senator McCain would be a mistake — ultimately voters will make their assessments based on the strength and weaknesses of the top of the tickets.  If anything, Democrats should be talking about McCain-Bush, not McCain-Palin.  Every day we are focused on Palin is a day we are not amplifying the Obama campaign’s message that Senator McCain simply represents four more years of President Bush.

Admittedly, I’m a little sad about this. Palin news is like political crack right now, but we have to get it together and refocus on what’s at stake in ’08.

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