Palin’s Appeal

Ross is correct that Palin’s favorability ratings remain positive (Rasmussen: 53 fav-45 unfav), but it seems to me that this is close to the kind of argument that old Hillary Clinton supporters would trot out whenever someone claimed that their candidate was “too polarizing”: more people like her than hate her, but just barely.  The unfav ratings for Obama (42) and Biden (38) are lower, while McCain’s Rasmussen numbers are identical to Palin’s.  That may mean that Palin’s appeal is no better or worse than McCain’s declining appeal.  Now that the campaign has opted to go almost purely negative and she has taken up the attack dog role I think we are going to see her favorability ratings drop steadily.  Perhaps there is an audience for Palin’s remarks about Obama “palling around with terrorists” and declaring that “there is a place in Hell for women who don’t support other women,” but I don’t imagine that it is going to be very large when all is said and done.  It may not matter in this election, but some of the bizarre, demonstrably false claims that Palin has made on her own behalf during this campaign, such as the strange Sudan divestment claim, work like acid to destroy her reputation for authenticity.  Some of her claims have gone beyond Romneyesque: the claim about her support for Alaskan divestment from companies operating in Sudan makes some of his earnest frauds seem almost admirable in their hypocrisy.  So while it is true that Palin still has net positive ratings and has not become a simply unpopular figure nationwide, in swingstateafter swing state she is becoming precisely that.  The old line about never having a second chance to make a first impression is correct.

The reality is that this scarcely matters.  Barring some truly bizarre changes over the next four weeks, Palin will be the losing VP nominee, and even if a losing VP nominee later comes back in another election to capture the presidential nomination he almost never wins the general election.  Most of the time, the losing VP candidate never wins the nomination in his own right and some never bother to make the attempt.  Dole, Mondale, Quayle, Lieberman, and Edwards are all cautionary tales of what happens to losing VP candidates who don’t know that they should have stayed away from the campaign trail.  Quayle at least saved himself the embarrassment of primary defeats by having to withdraw so early in the 1999-2000 cycle for lack of any funding.  Unless we think that Palin is going to break a rule that only FDR has broken, her national political future with respect to presidential politics should come to an abrupt end next month.  No one, least of all her die-hard admirers, wants to see her celebrating a three-way tie for third place in New Hampshire.