Interesting article by the usually very liberal Michael Goodwin.
The straw that stirs the drink
By Michael Goodwin, The New York Daily News
Wednesday, September 10th 2008
Common sense and its snarky cousin, conventional wisdom, hold that presidential elections are won or lost at the top of the ticket. But there's an exception to every rule and Sarah Palin might be it.
Evidence abounds that Palin is rocking the race from the No. 2 spot. Most dramatic is the 10-point lead she and John McCain hold in the Gallup/USA Today poll, which shows them at 54%, the highest number yet for either ticket.
Almost every poll taken since Palin's convention speech shows the GOP ahead or tied, a reversal from most earlier findings. Crowds at McCain-Palin rallies are larger and more enthusiastic than when McCain appeared alone.
And here's the absolute proof Palin is the straw that stirs the drink: Democrats are attacking her more than McCain.
Days after he congratulated her and called her "an admirable person" who "will add a compelling new voice to this campaign," Barack Obama Tuesday called Palin a liar. You know she's hit a nerve when the opposing party's presidential nominee goes after the other party's VP nominee in such raw terms.
Then again, Sarah Palin is not your average VP nominee. She can, as Fred Thompson put it, field-dress a moose. She is a young mother. She is pro-life. She is from a small town in a sparsely populated state. She's a former beauty queen, smart, direct and winningly funny.
And, maybe most important, the left-wing media hate her. One or all of those factors is changing key voter preferences, at least for now.
According to the Gallup tracking survey, those flocking to McCain-Palin are the middle-of-the-road independents who were evenly split. They now favor the GOP ticket over the Democrats, 52% to 37%.
It wouldn't be surprising if a backlash against Big Media's unfair treatment of Palin is partially responsible. For 18 months, Americans were fed a daily diet of civil rights peas with a lecture that a vote against Obama or Clinton was a vote against history. You were a sexist if you voted against Clinton, a racist if you voted against Obama.
Comes now a woman on the GOP side, the first ever on its national ticket, and suddenly history doesn't figure in the new liberal media narrative of 2008. More important than shattering the glass ceiling is whether Palin could juggle five kids and still be vice president, and whether McCain was selling out by picking her.
Some in the press declared her unqualified before Obama did. Some argued her teen daughter's pregnancy proved she was unfit to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
And was it just me, or were some of those stories about Trig, her baby with Down syndrome, hinting she should have had an abortion when she learned of his disabilities? Was I wrong to detect suggestions she was so ambitious she was neglecting her kids?
Those thoughts went through my mind as I read The New York Times' front-page report on how Palin began leaking amniotic fluid on a trip to Texas, then flew home to Alaska to give birth. TheTimes cited a doctor from Massachusetts who, having never examined Palin, nonetheless offered the opinion she should have been examined before the trip home, even though Palin's own doctor gave the okay in a phone consultation.
I also found it curious The Times assigned four women, and no men, to the story, perhaps aiming to inoculate itself against charges of gender bias.
But the real bias of the left-wing media isn't race or gender or age. It's political. Are any of the four women on the story pro-life? Are any Republican? How about their editors?
Diversity comes in all forms, and the newsrooms of the broadcast networks and most broadsheet newspapers share a suffocating conformity of political affiliation. Surveys show the vast, vast majority of journalists at such places vote for liberal Democrats.
It's no wonder the coverage tilts the same way. The wonder is that the election of Sarah Palin could be the payback.
