Right-wing-talking-point idiocy and nattering pseudopunditry aside, the Palin VP candidacy is indisputably dead in the water. If you've ever spent five minutes in a checkout counter, you'll know that the image that follows is proof of that.
As Rick Klein says on his ABC news blog:
Let’s say you don’t read The New York Times or The Washington Post (or The Note, for that matter). Let’s say you don’t follow the big political blogs and you’re not obsessed with every turn of the screw of this fascinating presidential race.
Let’s say, instead, like millions of working-class Americans, you get your “news” on the political race from the supermarket aisle. Let’s say you’re -- I don’t know, a “hockey mom” -- and you’re intrigued by this Sarah Palin person you’ve been hearing so much about since Friday.
So you’re shopping this week -- and what do you see on the cover of US Weekly? That esteemed journalistic institution is taking it right to John McCain’s running mate -- with a hard-hitting piece that details the “scandal” involving her daughter’s pregnancy.
“BABIES, LIES & SCANDAL,” screams the headline on the cover, with a picture of a smiling Palin holding her fifth child, 4-month-old Trig.
Inside is a collection of Palin lowlights -- from her daughter’s now well-known pregnancy; to Internet rumors that the governor pretended to be pregnant to cover for her daughter; to “troopergate”; to her onetime support for the “bridge to nowhere”; to a radio appearance where she giggled while shock jocks called a political rival a “bitch” and a “cancer.”
“Within hours of McCain’s surprise introduction of the little-known, charismatic mother of five as his running mate, the scandals began to emerge as quickly as flies at a Labor Day picnic,” Mara Reinstein writes for the magazine.
Um...yeah. Does everyone understand now why Obama has been signaling to back off on Sarah Palin? Because for once, the realities of this misbegotten candidacy are so apparent that even the supermarket tabloids can pick up on them.
You know, "back off!" is what they shout when a missile is misfiring on the launchpad--it's either going to fizzle out or explode. To quote Klein one last time:
It should be noted that there is no new reporting here that I can discern -- just a greatest hits from what’s out there.
But this, to me, is the clearest evidence yet that the McCain-Palin campaign is losing the battle over Palin’s image. US Weekly readers are the voters her selection was designed to attract. There’s not much to like in this early take -- and not much to indicate that the next round will be much better.
Amen. Despite the Republican's desperate attempts to the contrary, the framing of Palin has indisputably solidified. And keep in mind this is before she's opened her mouth in anything but a staged setting.
This missile's going nowhere. I, for one, am happy to back off.