Contrary to expectations promoted by Team Obama, the McCain-Palin ticket is spreading like wildfire among women, especially white women. A recent ABC poll found:
White women have moved from 50-42 percent in Obama’s favor before the conventions to 53-41 percent for McCain now, a 20-point shift in the margin that’s one of the single biggest post-convention changes in voter preferences.
So what does Obama do? He goes on the attack–not on McCain, but Palin. Nevermind that (a) vice-presidential candidates and surrogates typically do the attacking, not the top of the ticket; and (b) such behavior is likely to drive even more women (and men) to McCain-Palin.
Kirsten Powers writes a great piece in the New York Post on how Obama blew it:
No, Obama didn’t engage in the mass sneering at Palin – but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign’s first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a “former mayor” when she is in fact a sitting governor.
When she retaliated (justifiably) by mocking his stint as a organizer, the Obama camp was clearly rattled. Obama himself actually began arguing about the importance of community organizing. His supporters amplified this cry – claiming Palin’s attack was a racist slur and passing around e-mails titled “Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the country was probably wondering what being a community organizer has to do with being president.
Lured by the McCain camp, Obama supporters engaged in an argument about who had more overall experience – the top of the Democratic ticket or the bottom of the GOP ticket. This diminished Obama.
Read the whole thing.