\ If I were Sarah Palin......by Debra Sanders

New campaign needed to reach women rooting for Palin

Attention all campaign organizers:Our current ads and campaign strategies are not likely to work in the current situation

Written by: debra s on Sep 12, 2008 2:01 PM EDT
Linked to campaigns: Obama for America

I am becoming obsessed with the Sarah Palin issue. It is dominating my thinking and my writing time, when I have a stack of "MUST BE DONE TODAY" papers sitting right in front of me. Most of these are left over from M,T, W, and Th's "must be done today" piles....because as I said, I am becoming obsessed with the Sarah Palin issue.

Here's the thing...I have been donating money (that I absolutely do not have to give away) to MoveOn, to Defenders of Wildlife, etc. etc. etc. to support their campaigns to get the word out regarding Sarah Palin's various stance on issues; to reach voters with information regarding her shocking and deplorable lack of knowledge and/or readiness to step into the vice presidency of the United States.

If you're reading this, chances are you know most or many or at least the gist of the facts surrounding Sarah Palin. That she is entirely ill-prepared is by now obvious. That she is the anti-Christ to those of us who support the laws that continue moving women toward equal status and those of us intent on being proactive in saving our planet, is also obvious. Spending millions on campaigns to get this word out to the "swing" voters seems unproductive to me.

We're spending money and precious time to preach to the proverbial choir.

The sector of the population that has been electrified by Sarah Palin, for the most part, is not emotionally invested in wolves, polar bears, or even the fact that she chose to bring a child with Down syndrome into this world. For one thing, from the blogs I have been seeing, most parents of kids with disabilities already are not supporters of Palin. They are not fools. All they have to do is see that Alaska ranks second from the bottom in terms of health care for children in a state that has about the highest rate of children with fetal alcohol effects, to know that Sarah Palin has been no "friend" to middle income families trying to gain adequate health care for their medically fragile or high needs children.

Not to mention that she has gone on record to say that No Child Left Behind is working. Parents with children in the special education system know, and have known for a long time, that for their children NCLB is not working. Has never worked.

And for she, of eight month old child with a disability, to attempt to come across as if she's happily riding the bus all parents of children with special needs have ridden, whether by choice or simply by selection, is absurd at best, offensive at worst.

I think we're missing the boat and we've very little time to figure out how to hop back on. We are not going to bring back all the intelligent middle-income women who have suddenly become groupies of this Dr. Dobson in a skirt by giving them facts about her. Or by bombarding them with all the reasons Palin is not qualified to serve in the White House.

You know why?

Because women are relating to her. They are identifying with her. They feel some sort of emotional connection to Sarah Palin that says: "Wow. She is just like me."

And when people feel like that, they discard facts and reason.

Whether it’s because Sarah Palin is the woman that many want to be (tough, feisty, smart, pretty and able to do her own hunting and fishing without relying on a guy to do it for her); or whether it’s because she says things like “gonna,” has five kids and you feel like you could sit down and slam back a brewski with her... the women committing to Palin are those who feel emotionally invested in seeing her in the White House. What a great role model for our daughters, I am hearing. What a great role model for women, I have heard from the mouths of women I have previously considered intelligent (and still do...I just consider them temporarily deranged).

How can any woman of the twenty-first century say this woman is a good role model, knowing what is threatened by her election?

They can say it because they are not hearing facts. They are feeling. And what I think they are feeling is that Sarah Palin making it to the white house says that we too could accomplish something of this magnitude. We of the ordinary.

One thing about Hillary...while just about all of us respect her; I venture to guess that equal in numbers are those who would be just a tad tongue tied and intimidated were she to pop into the living room.

For Hillary, I suspect most of us would dress up and want to be able to offer at least semi-decent wine. On the other hand, Palin guts moose and has popped out five babies. Something about those two facts takes the edge off worrying about looking or acting more sophisticated than we really are.

My contention is that the idea of Sarah Palin in the white house is empowering every woman who has felt powerless and ineffectual within the constellation of her world. Sarah Palin, of leather skirt and strapped on gun, is communicating to thousands of everyday, middle class American women that they matter. They count. They are A-Okay. A-Okay enough, in fact, to go all the way to the white house. And they would like to help put her there.

Later of course, these same women will feel duped and bamboozled by Sarah Palin, much as people have felt for centuries after falling madly in love with someone only to discover later that there was not much substance to love. The problem is--if I know my psychological stages of things--that awareness will come much later and we only have seven weeks to get a critical message across.

I am neither a marketer nor an ad person, and perhaps I am way off base here; but if we are going to open the eyes of the current swing voters, it is not going to be by bombarding them with statistics and facts proving that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be in the white house. It is not going to be by telling them how she is setting back the women’s rights movement by half a century, or showing gruesome footage of aerial slaugher endorsed by her. Because all of that doesn’t matter. Sarah Palin is a woman who makes other women feel empowered. She gives them hope.

If we are going to bring back those who have strayed, it is most likely only going to happen by bombarding the people of our country in a way that makes them feel like Sarah Palin clips their wings…makes them feel the need to emotionally detach from her.

How to do this is the subject for another post entirely, but first, I would love to hear what other people think about this. And if you agree, then how should we campaign over the next seven weeks?
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