An Interesting Week

The week ahead reminds me of the old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. These are going to be interesting days ahead, with a lot of challenges for progressives as we try to make our way through the minefield and into the White House.

The Republican Convention has already been drastically curtailed because of Hurricane Gustav, and although at first blush it might seem churlish to consider the political fallout from that event, we should probably do it anyway. Is this going to remind voters of Katrina and the Bush Administration's horrifically inept handling of that catastrophe, or is it going to give Bush and his cronies a second chance to get it right and look good? Is the fact that voters won't be reminded of Bush and Cheney at the convention a good thing or a bad thing?

Then there's the naming of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be McCain's running mate. An opportunity for the Democrats, or a trap? Their first reaction to her pick was wrong-headed and Obama himself corrected it. And I think it's obvious that in the way we discuss and treat Sarah Palin we have to be extraordinarily careful and avoid the idiot excesses that some left-wing bloggers have already begun to indulge in (such as their suggestion that Palin's latest child is actually her grandchild, the son of her 16-year-old daughter -- do we really need to be putting stupid shit like that out there?).

One thing Gustav will do is force the Republicans to tone down the red-meat rhetoric at their convention. They have to sound statesmanlike, not like rabid attack dogs. And Democrats have to be careful how they respond.

There are a couple of ways to attack McCain's choice that don't make progressives sound sexist or like they're attacking a hockey mom. I would suggest we concentrate on them:

• McCain wanted to pick Joe Lieberman to be his running mate, but was overruled by the right-wing of his own party, who, one could argue, practically made his choice for him. This could be a valuable line of attack, since it hits at McCain's so-called "maverick" status and points out the disturbing truth: that for the past eight years the worst, most fascistic elements of the Republican party have had McCain in their pocket.
• McCain picked for his vice president a person whom he had met exactly once. The rashness and the recklessness of the choice and the way it was made is a valid point, and needs to be made.
• Sarah Palin is a rabid right-wing extremist whose views are not mainstream -- which is exactly why the right wing of the GOP went so bonkers with joy when she was chosen. Pointing out exactly how far to the right of the American people she is makes a certain amount of sense.
• If Palin's choice galvanized the base of their party, it also has to galvanize the base of ours. This woman has views that are profoundly at odds with the majority of the American people, and that has to get people to move over to our side. Make people vote Democratic who otherwise would just stay at home and not bother to vote.

At the same time, Sarah Palin is an attractive, personable candidate, and we underestimate her at our peril. I hope Joe Biden is very, very careful in their upcoming debate, because if he goes after her the wrong way it could just spell disaster. Keep in mind the debate between the vice presidential candidates of 1988, when Michael Dukakis picked the venerable Lloyd Bentsen and George H.W. Bush picked the laughable J. Danforth Quayle, who was not just beaten but humiliated by Bensten in their debate by the most ferociously effective put-down in the history of modern politics: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

But we know who won that election, don't we?

NOTE 9/2: Sarah Palin's daughter is 17, not 16. And she's pregnant. And if the left-wing bloggers had not accused her of giving birth to Palin's Down Syndrome son, the fact of her pregnancy might not have come out -- at least not now.