Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan for President and here’s the skinny on her from an Alaskan blogger, including her ethics scandal. Her maverick reformer cred further wavers at the outset. And even though people like me who oppose domestic violence may think the trooper got what he deserved, the fact remains she initially covered up the truth, used her gubernatorial powers improperly and real reformers simply don’t do that.

She was also endorsed by Senator Ted Stevens:
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And he’s under current indictment on corruption charges. And all of this is being covered in the corporate press. So why did McCain REALLY choose her?

(Update: Eli at Firedoglake has even more)

Consider the pros and cons McCain had to weigh, starting with some election history:

In popular votes, Jimmy Carter had 50.08%. It’s been 32 years since a Dem carried 50%. Before that, it was LBJ’s landslide in 1964, so once in 44 years means the country’s voters have been leaning rightist. The closest race to that was Clinton in ‘96, at 49.23%, and that took the advantage of incumbency to achieve. But let’s consider the thing that really counts, the close electoral vote contests:

1976: Ford would have won with 30 more electoral votes.

2000: Setting aside the disenfranchisement of voters, the flawed counts and the Supreme Court’s usurpation of the accurate recount process, Gore would have won with 4 more electoral votes.

2004: Though Kerry won 8 million more votes than Gore and the most of any Dem in history, Bush’s ground operation was even better. Both broke the previous highest vote-getter (Reagan in 1984). And Kerry would have won with 19 more electoral votes.

So, from a historical perspective, the Democratic Party split in response to the Civil Rights bills has existed for 40 years. Throughout the entire history of the Democratic Party, Southern Democrats have ALWAYS held the upper hand over the party. The notion that it’s dominated by Northern liberals has been a carefully constructed myth that began during the McCarthy-Nixon era as they tried to portray Democrats as Commie appeasing traitors.

With the antiwar movement of the late Sixties/early Seventies, which became a movement of a majority of Americans, Nixon successfully made the ‘weak on national defense’ charge stick. At the same time, though, he was actually mining angry, racist Americans, mostly in the South, by exploiting the Southern (racial) strategy. Every Republican since has emulated that. As a result, the South, as a region, held a virtual stranglehold on presidential elections for the next 40 years.

Since JFK’s squeaker election in 1960, no Democrat north of the Mason Dixon line has come close to winning the office, but John Kerry came very, very close. As well, no Republican has won north of that line either. The Bushes had to abandon their New England base for a Texas base before winning the office. And Reagan/Nixon, as Westerners, still lived in Southern California (though it’s unlikely that their region made the difference. It was the campaign racism and hawkish positions that still drew the support of Southern voters).

The notion that Reagan drew them on economic issues arose because the economy was sinking throughout the 1970s under the weight of the debts of Vietnam, coupled with Federal Reserve errors and even bigger: the rise of OPEC. So the Reagan Dems existed, but without that, most were predisposed to vote Republican because of the old formula of race + hawkishness. Carter helped solidify the weak-on-defense claim because of the Iran hostage crisis, but no other evidence of that claim against Dems is supported by any facts. (The GOP will also point to the Bay of Pigs as a loss of nerve by JFK but in fact, JFK NEVER planned to do that. The fiasco was launched by the US military and intel operatives without his assent, a very dangerous thing to have occurred in a democracy. JFK simply refused to be bullied into doing what he always opposed, which was courageous as it risked his career.) But it added the anti-Castro Cuban-American bloc to the GOP column in the 47 years since.

Am I digressing too much yet? Need some coffee?

The Southern electorate was further bolstered by Sunbelt migration, but that’s nearly peaked with the 1946 first wave baby boomers reaching retirement age. Within 8 years, that shift should reach stasis and decline. And as recent elections show, the northern Democrats are edging very close to a majority by staying close to an equilibrium in the Midwest while growing its support in the West. The urbanization and migration patterns of older Northerners is also having an increasing impact in Eastern Virginia and the Eastern half of the Carolinas. That Sunbelt migration is a bit of a misnomer, as the entire West Coast has also gained from it. It would be better described as an Anti-Snow migration.

Looking ahead, then, much of the state growth changes are more likely to come from immigration, which mostly means from Latin America, with its greatest impact on the West and Southwest. Such families are leaning heavily Democratic, though Republicans try to make inroads into the heavily Catholic demographic by exploiting the abortion issue and exploiting racial divisions that still exist there (as race is an issue globally). But they’re still losing ground with that strategy, which provokes more of their xenophobia appeals, loaded with myths, about “illegals”. They’re trying to hold on to their slipping grip on political power.

Bringing us back to the voting trends that have been shifting away from Republicans for 16 years, even though they’ve maintained a narrow edge in the past two elections. The Bush record makes it very difficult for them to hold that edge this time, no matter who their nominee is. Party registration in the past few years confirms this.

McCain’s strategy to date of embracing Bush and sucking up to every base the GOP has, wasn’t providing very hopeful signs. An electoral college winner has to be able to get to a minimum of 49% in most cases and McCain only recently peaked at 46% and subsided. Obama’s polled as high as 50% to 52% for parts of this year.

So in simplest terms, McCain has to hold every single state he can that Bush won or find a swing state Gore and Kerry won to replace any he loses. And the state by state polling hasn’t been very favorable to him grabbing fresh states. NH (4 E-votes), and MI (17), are really all he has any chance at fresh gains.

So the Palin choice demonstrates that his internal polling showed Pawlenty (an under 50% winner by 1%) would not draw MN and neither would Romney guarantee MI. Which forces him to plan B: hold that line!

The real battlegrounds

Among the states McCain is in the greatest danger of losing that Bush won are NM (5), NV (5) and CO (9), which would lose him the election. So McCain has been forced into a defensive strategy with his VP pick Because NM, NV and CO offered no Republicans that could help him hold them.

That’s why I was convinced he’d pick Rob Portman, as OH is the fifth most likely state to join the Democratic column, based on the polls. Instead, McCain appears to be embarked on the Squeaker Strategy. Palin at least guarantees Alaska’s 3 votes remain in his column. But he still needs one other small state gain to eke out a win. The most obvious is he’s now going to go hard for NH (4) because, unlike most Oval Office seeking Republicans, he’s been historically popular there.

Realistically, McCain won’t win NM. He only has the potential of adding NH and MI and besides them, NV, CO, OH, VA and MT are at the highest risk of being won by Obama. Obama even has a shot at MO and FL too.

Conclusion

This can’t be about disaffected Hillary voters as I’ve pointed out previously that most of the non-feminist ones are likely blue dogs from Southern states, most of which Obama won’t carry. The feminist Hillary supporters aren’t going to vote McCain-Palin and surrender the right to reproductive choices for decades. And the GOP - with an assist from the corporate media - has exploited the myth that it’s all about angry feminists versus Obama precisely to provoke Democratic infighting. Just as race and regional bias have been left out of the myths about ‘weak on defense’ and ‘Reagan Democrats’, the net result is to advance Republican elective chances.

So with this VP pick, it signals a gamble on McCain’s part. He could lose NV, CO, NM and MT but if he picks up NH, he still wins. Of that most vulnerable group I just defined, he can least afford to lose OH and VA, as he’ll need to take more Kerry states to offset either, and only MI is within his reach.

So why didn’t he choose Portman of OH? That’s pretty perplexing, other than not wanting to tie himself any closer to Bush, or the vetting turned up a flaw.

Or maybe he’s just confident he can hold both VA and OH, possibly with the blue dog disaffected Hillary supporters his internal polling reveals.

But any way you slice it, McCain’s going after a 1-to-3 electoral vote win, it seems. There’s no room for error. He sacrificed the foreign policy and overall inexperience arguments to roll the dice. The only thing he’s guaranteed is Alaska’s votes. Does he think Palin can pull in more Libertarianish independent western voters? As a mayor of a town of under 6,000 and governor of a state of 670 thousand for a mere 20 months, let’s put that in perspective: there’s 18 US cities larger than the people she governs. Should we elect the mayor of Charlotte or Memphis, with similar populations? That’s pretty insulting to Libby Dole, Hutchison, Collins and other very experienced women in Congress. He’s essentially labeling all of them as tarnished insiders when most have cleaner hands than the ones attached to his wrists.

Or was he hoping to hold his edge in white male voters by offering an attractive woman as a mere Madison Avenue ploy? (If you hear the sound of one hand clapping, you can guess where the other hand is). Is it sexist to exploit a woman this way? Or is it sexist to suggest what might be motivating such decisions?

I think it’s insulting to male and female voters equally. It resembles too much what he’s learned from his mentor, GWBush: anything to win and let the country deal with any bad decisions that result afterward. Putin and Bin Laden and the daffy dictator over North Korea are supposed to be impressed because the VP can shoot a moose? Because she has a good hook shot? I mean, really, this person makes Dan Quayle seem Churchillian.

The only way this isn’t a gamble is if he’s holding an October surprise card up his sleeve. Otherwise, this is an act of desperation based on eking out the narrowest win in modern history.

We can only surmise but the appearance of a desperate gamble isn’t likely to inspire confidence beyond a mild, temporary bump in the polls. It clearly will inspire much talk that McCain is in trouble.