Sarah Palin in North Carolina: “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”
The McCain campaign is trying to run away from this comment, apparently.
Great job picking a running mate, Senator McCain. It’s clear enough why you won’t allow the media any access to her. Yet she derails your campaign anyway. She contradicts your positions on matters of substance, like the advisability of anti-terror raids into Pakistan. (On that issue, Palin agrees with your opponent, Senator Obama.) And she says things like the above, disparaging huge swaths of the country whose votes you’re desperately going to need. And people gave Obama grief over “bittergate.” Palin’s comment is orders of magnitude worse.
The significant thing about Real America-gate is that it highlights the stark difference between these two campaigns. With McCain-Palin, we have a dimwitted, walking self-parody of a running mate who seeks viciously to divide the country. With Obama-Biden we have something very different indeed.
Although even Obama supporters tend to knock his “no red states, no blue states, just the United States” talk as pie in the sky, the fact is this man has gotten to where he is today because people have responded to that very message — the precise opposite of what Palin is hawking.
Obama doesn’t mean to ignore deep-seated differences between the constituencies. But he believes if we pose problems and solutions in new ways, we can chip away at some of the impasses of the last 30-40 years. And large numbers of Americans will get on board. It’s America’s only option at this point.
Palin’s distorted, ugly vision is not what John McCain originally intended to run on, but it is what he has chosen. He and his disgraceful subordinate must be defeated.
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