Folks, the campaign has entered The Twilight Zone.
Love her or hate her, the Alaska governor Sarah Palin is undoubtedly having an impact on the campaign, which is unusual for vice-presidential candidates.
In perhaps the most startling news, polls showed Palin stealing more than just the spotlight from the Democrats. She is also apparently swinging voters—white female voters in particular—to John McCain’s side.
The women’s shift
A Washington Post/ABC News poll certainly made the rounds this week, showing McCain with a 12-point lead over Barack Obama among white women. That same poll showed Obama in the lead of that group by eight points in late August. In the overall race, most polls show McCain and Obama in a statistical dead heat.
It’s been just over a week since Palin came out swinging in her first major address to the nation at the Republican National Convention, and her speech seemed to signal a new phase of the campaign. The tenor of the race is hotter, ads are more pointed, the rhetoric more strident. On Wednesday day-to-day campaigning descended into the absurd, with whole news cycles consumed with manufactured scandals over “lipstick” comments.
And one more thing seems clear. Even more than in the past, the 2008 presidential campaign is all about personality. As a top McCain adviser said: “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”
Sub-plots and questions
Much has been made about Palin and her ability to rally evangelical Christian voters. To be sure, leaders of the religious right, who had previously rejected McCain, are now on board. But it is hard to determine the overall impact on the race, because defining Evangelical voters is difficult and the group is not easily pigeon-holed. However, it seems clear that McCain will need religious voters to win in November. In 2004, people who attended religious services every week were 41% of the electorate, and 61% of them voted for George W. Bush.
The big picture
With Palin’s presence in the race, two huge questions loom: where is Hillary Clinton and what are her supporters going to do? Hillary has so far been unwilling to fire away at the Alaska governor, who has adopted Clinton’s “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” mantra. And although the two women are diametrically opposed on the policy front, it seems as if Palin is indeed peeling off some jaded Hillary supporters from the Democrats. Stay tuned, this race just got very, very interesting…
