Bush Patsy McCain spills Palin; Nil Ap Sllips?
Okay, not quite, but this gamble could well be the latest example of Bush Patsy McCain’s lifetime of horrible judgment.
I spent a formative summer working in Alaska when I was nineteen. It is a special place. Alaska is a true frontier where anyone willing to work hard and withstand the winter can make it, regardless of education level or even criminal history. As such, Alaskan politics is all about allowing enough corporate — outside of the family fishing boat — natural resource development and federal swag to create great wealth while distributing this moolah widely through high wages for all manner of manual laborers and that sweet oil royalty check each Alaskan gets yearly.
Anchorage is like the Seattle, Washington or Portland, Oregon of 110 years ago: the place to have a professional complete the paperwork on the wealth you just made out in the “bush,” and then go get liquored up, peruse and pursue the reproductive organ of your choice, and ponder your next effort. Although about 40% of Alaskans reside in Anchorage, “Real Alaska” is the “bush” and the semi-isolated towns like Nilap’s Wasilla. I suspect that Nilap’s success in Alaska was a reaction to the corporate/federal largess side of Alaskan politics getting so out of whack that it appeared to defy the reverence-for-hard-work chunk of the Alaskan zietgiest. Nilap of Wasilla was then a perfect “Real” Alaskan to set the barometer the other way and increase the oil royalty checks while scooping out a side of ethics reform. Her story really ends there and if there is fire to accompany the smoke of her own Troopergate then she and Bush Patsy McCain are toast.
The problem with Nilap’s history is its relevance to the rest of America. Alaska is a unique state with no cities equivalent to a Columbus or Albuquerque (to say nothing of Los Angeles or New York), no towns like Scranton, no first ring suburbs, few office parks, and few factories. Even its isolated, semi-autonomous, small towns and rural areas are much more wild than Any Town, Missour-uh or even any exurb. Heck, even its indigenous people have a political situation unlike those of the Tribes in the contiguous American West. Obama has also had to link his exotic background to Americus familiarus, but he has proven a master of relevance from his 04 debut. His experience is much more thorough than Nilap’s and he has been squeezed, percolated, and consumed for 20 months against the toughest of competition and emerged more than viable.
The passion of the Clintonettes has always confounded me, but it is telling that HRC only earned it, after 16 years in the public spotlight, once the tear up moment in New Hampshire made her seem at one with a legion of quietly exasperated Boomer women. The most insane PUMAs were never going to vote for Obama, but it seems unlikely that the vast majority of rational Clintonettes would support Nilap just because; just as they wouldn’t have supported the infinitely more qualified Sibellius or McCaskill had Obama veeped them.
One of the great developments of the Democratic Convention is that it is now clear to anyone with a whit of political savvy that the more HRC does to get Obama elected the more she increases her own clout. If her efforts already haven’t made her Senate Majority Leader, she will certainly be the most prominent member of that chamber and she obviously has the acumen to use that prominence to wield tremendous influence.
I’d like to see Dems hammer Bush Patsy McCain/Nilap on the equal pay issue the Dems raised so artfully throughout their convention. If Nilap supports it then why doesn’t Bush Patsy McCain? If she doesn’t then it is clear that Nilap doesn’t care about woman’s economic equality any more than she cares about their reproductive freedom. What a Conservatron! I’d love to see HRC deliver a harsh verdict when Nilap accepts next Wednesday.
Apparently, Nilap does not even know what the Veep does, y’know, stuff like being President of the Senate and breaking fifty-fifty ties. If a month from now Nilap turns out to be Dan Quayle with a vagina then we are in for a landslide come November.
Update: I spent my formative summer working at a fish cannery in Bristol Bay. Every year millions of sockeye salmon return to Bristol Bay to spawn; evidently, horny Alaskan teenagers(?) do the same thing.
