I had an all-day deposition today in a multiparty case. One of the attys present had a bright red "Palin 2012" sticker on the top of the laptop he had at the depo. It totally blew my mind for the 3 following reasons:
- People usually don't fly up the white flag 7 days pre-election;
- The intraparty knives usually don't come out this early, either; and
- The wingnuts have no idea how unpopular Palin really is.
While I knew at this time in '84 that Mondale was in deep trouble, the idea of people displaying "Ferraro '88" stickers would've been unthinkable. While my memories of '72 are a little vaguer, the idea of "Shriver '76" sticker would've been equally absurd even though Shriver did end up running then. I can't ever recall seeing supporters of any VP nominee acting this way a week before an election before.
I'm flabbergasted that people are printing such stickers, I'm shocked that they're distributing them, and I'm positively floored that people are displaying them. While polling data indicates that McCain is approaching the dead man walking stage, one might expect that she would wait until the body is cold before thinking about the next cycle.
A quick trip over to Google was even more eye-opening. There are 7 different stickers to be found for sale on-line. None of them are the one I saw today (it was oval, and it was red and white).
There obviously is the question of how someone smart enough to graduate from law school and pass a bar exam could openly support someone so manifestly unqualified. The bigger question, however, is how or why there are people who honestly think she would stand a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Granted, the very idea of a 1-term GA governor winning in 1976 seemed absurd when he started. There is, however, ample polling data showing that a sizeable majority of the American public has no interest in ever seeing her in the WH.
To me, these stickers say as much about future election cycles as about this one. The GOP coalition of mammon-worshipping Wall Street millionares and Wal-Mart fundamentalists was shaky already. There's ample evidence that the coalition will totally blow apart after the upcoming loss.
The Palinites will blame McCain, and the more "moderate" GOP elements will blame Palin. There's precious little evidence that the party will coalesce around a message that will allow it to rally in 2010. I eagerly await future "circular firing squad" columns about the GOP.