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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
The Republican base greets its true leader in small-town Pennsylvania. And hits me with a car.
Editor's note: Watch video of Rebecca Traister and Caitlin Shamberg at the Palin rally here.
By Rebecca Traister
Read more: Abortion, John McCain, Politics, News, Joseph Biden, Rebecca Traister, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Sarah Palin
Oct. 31, 2008 | WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- No wonder Sarah Palin is going rogue.
You would be too, if, five days before you and your running mate were possibly going to blow a presidential election in a big way, you could draw a crowd of 13,000 people to an outdoor baseball stadium in the near-freezing cold. How could you not have supreme confidence about your future in politics when your lollapalooza-level turnout took place in the same northern Pennsylvania town and on the same day that your direct competitor, the guy on the ticket that's lighting up polls around the country, managed to pull a crowd of only around 400 into a temperature-controlled college gymnasium?
Welcome to Williamsport, Pa., where on one fresh-sliced Oct. 30, less than a week before the general election, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his Republican counterpart, Sarah Palin, rallied within three hours and three miles of each other, to far different effect.
Biden, sounding tired but loud, had a simple task: push back against the Republican attack machine currently sweeping through Pennsyltucky, telling voters that Barack Obama is a socialistic, gun-stealing, Joe-the-Plumber hating, terrorist-associating spiller of innocent fetal blood. In traditionally red, rural, religious counties, Biden's job is to remind voters that Democrats can speak to them about their lives as fluently as that Thrillah from Wasilla.
"I was born and grew up in Scranton," began Biden, before saying hello to Sister Ann, one of his former teachers from St. Paul's Catholic school in that nearby city; throwing out some love to the newly minted World Champion Philadelphia Phillies; and bragging about his wife, Jill, appearing on local WIP sports radio. Biden acknowledged the impending arrival of Palin to Williamsport, noting that "she's a good person," but that as "Bobby Casey" (for you outsiders, that's devoutly Catholic, pro-life and popular Dem Sen. Robert Casey Jr.) has said, Palin and McCain can't be mavericks if they're really Bush sidekicks. (Reason No. 268 that Election Day cannot come soon enough: no more maverick-sidekick lipstick-dipstick jokes.)
"Almost everywhere we're going is deep in red territory," said Biden's campaign spokesman David Wade as the senator spoke, acknowledging that the Palin rally would surely be a bigger draw in these parts, but that Biden's presence often takes the edge off. Obama's "defender in chief," as Wade called Biden, is a known quantity in Williamsport. "There's a little bit of Scranton in all these red counties."
But that redness, said Wade, means Pennsylvania "is always a down-to-the-wire state. Republicans have always had this theory that if they can distract, and raise character issues, they can win it."
Distractions and characters were very much in play at the Palin rally, where the line of people who had been waiting for her 7:30 appearance since before 2 was getting ever more labyrinthine. One woman was coloring in an unironic "I {heart} S & M" sign -- that's for "Sarah" and "McCain" -- while a man dressed in full Hillary Clinton regalia was insisting that he/she was at the rally because "Obama ditched me." Mostly, though, people were shivering with cold and anticipation, to see this election cycle's Republican rock star.
"The media may not be portraying Sarah as popular," said Ellen Margraff, "but look around." Indeed, the size and ardor of the crowd recalled nothing so much as a Barack Obama rally, the ones that the media covered so breathlessly during the primaries and through Thursday, when he spoke at three rallies in three states, Florida, Virginia and Missouri, and drew as many as 10,000 each time. The polling on Palin may be terrible, conventional wisdom may insist that she has been a drag on the ticket -- as Rachel Maddow argues, she could be "the single biggest anti-buoyancy agent of the McCain/Palin campaign." But when you see one of these things -- with the fans with their blankets and their buttons, their Christian literature and thundersticks in tow -- there is a disconnect between all that conventional wisdom and the Palin fever that seems to be burning hotter than ever through the Republican base.
"She's not with the Washington elite," said Margraff. "She is a true person who stands by her beliefs."
"I've come to see Sarah, our next vice president of the United States!" shouted Gloria Gordon, a 64-year-old police officer. "Everything she says, I agree with 100 percent of it." Should McCain and Palin fall short of their goals next Tuesday, "She'll be president in 2012," assured Gordon without missing a nanosecond.
"I'm a strong woman, and I really relate to strong women," explained 67-year-old Gloria Stere, who wore a bright blue Palin Power T-shirt. Stere said she had just retired from running her own sewing machine business, and though a "dyed-in-the-wool Republican," she had considered -- just thought about -- voting for Hillary Clinton. But, she was quick to add, "Palin is the one that absolutely made my mind up about supporting John McCain. I took one look at her, heard her speak, and thought, 'Oh my god,' she is the one."
