My $0.02: Sarah Palin is neither the problem, nor the solution.

TM NOTE: This is a re-posting of Wonk’s post from 8.28, as promised. Enjoy the read and her view of the current voting dilemma she’s experiencing.

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While the national debate over the Mythical Threat of the (not-just-a) Mosque (not) at Ground Zero continues, I’d like to distract your attention to that other national distraction… who else but Sarah Palin?

Actually, what I am going to say here is ultimately not about her, either. It’s about all of us as Americans. But, sadly I stand a better chance of getting your attention this way.

Why? Because it’s become a national pastime to hyperventilate over Sarah Palin.

Either by obsessing over her as if she were the One True Evil to bash all the livelong day to Obama’s re-election in 2012.

Or, by propping her up as the Pioneer Woman Fix to American politics today, by virtue of a good ol’ fashioned slap in the face to the Good Ol’ Club.

Neither of these narrow views of Palin get at the truth as far as I’m concerned.

Sarah Palin is a female pol building a rightwinger populist brand. She is actively courting the grassroots on the hard right. As is her right. She’s her own woman and she’s chosen to argue for a rightwing worldview.

From my leftwing feminist worldview, Sarah Palin is not the problem with American politics today nor is she the solution to it.

For her conservative grassroots, she may very well be their idea of a solution. That’s nice for them.

It’s better than I can say for the grassroots on the left right now anyways, which is all the more sad because not only did we have our own Rosie-the-riveter telling us We Can Do It, not only was she 16-years battle-tested against the vast right wing and the tabloid stream press, not only was she a policy wonk who could get things done, but she understood the crux of the problem with American politics today was the “trust bust” (a theme that goes back to her Hillary Rodham days at Wellesley).

From the Dream Ticket Debate in Los Angeles, California, January 2008:

Hillary: Well, I would, with all due respect, say that the United States government is much more than a business. It is a trust. It is the most complicated organization. But it is not out to make a profit. It is out to help the American people. It is about to stand up for our values and to do what we should at home and around the world to keep faith with who we are as a country. And with all due respect, we have a president who basically ran as the CEO, MBA president, and look what we got. I am not too happy about the results.

Obama: Let me — let me just also point out that, you know, Mitt Romney hasn’t gotten a very good return on his investment during this presidential campaign And so, I’m happy to take a look at my management style during the course of this last year and his. I think they compare fairly well.

The prose of governing versus the poetry of campaigning. Hillary understood.

She was no hopey dopey Change to Pretty Please Believe In.

Nor was she any flimsy whimsy Mama Grizzly.

She was a Master Tigress. (And, still is!)

Point being, it’s not like the grassroots on the left didn’t have the chance to thwart the Mama Grizzly phenomenon before it ever got started. We were right there on the verge. 18 million of us were ready. It could have been the Decade of Master Tigresses. However…

As Corzine put it recently, “she would have been able to handle this Congress… but it was just Obama’s time.””

Snort! If you *still* rationalize voting for Obama over Hillary because it was “just Obama’s time,” then please withhold any “concern” you may have about the rise of Mama Grizzlies. Male empty suits aren’t the only ones who “just have their time,” you know.

What Palin does with the power base she’s building, time will only tell. Everybody seems to have all kinds of theories about her political maneuvering and her political chances and what a President Palin’s governing style would be like in comparison to her rhetoric. But, I really don’t have much of a sense of any of that other than a general feeling of “neither here, nor there.” Citizen Sarah seems to be enjoying the ride and living in the moment and already has 12 million reasons and counting to laugh all the way to the bank.

As for Palin’s chances at the presidency were she to ever run, all I can say is that after experiencing the open season on women pols and their supporters in 2008, I really see the nomination process itself as a huge hurdle, forget about the general election. One of the two major wings (D or R) of the United Corporations of America will have to make a woman their nominee before I’ll believe either the Ds or Rs are capable of it. So far they’ve only proven how capable they are of using women as scapegoats to prop up men with very little leadership and conviction of their own to stand on.

As such, I firmly believe the bimbostein bogeywoman of Sarah Palin is one that exists in the cynical hearts and fevered imaginations of a bankrupt Democratic party that increasingly has had nothing to run on, so it desperately needs someone to keep on running against all the way to 2012. Some party of women that is.

Mother Jones, who in a very different time did not have the right to vote and did not support women’s suffrage once said:

“I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country! You don’t need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!”

If you want to combat the rightwing memes and policies spread by Mama Grizzlies (as I do), the only effective way (to my mind) is to build up the hellraisers who can provide a real meaningful alternative to those rightwing memes/policies. Tearing down Palin’s womanhood will not stop the rightwing agenda. Caricaturing her as a backwoods biddy will not stop the attack on women’s rights.

Because here is the real problem (this is a screenshot, you can click on this link to the chart to see it in its entirety, or click on the image below for a larger view):

Note: This is not an endorsement of the Green party. I have not made up my mind yet but am looking at all my third party options.

I just think the chart is hilarious all around, but most especially where it says “Right to Choose.”

See that Question mark next to Democratic support?

It’s the same thing that I call the Asterisk Next to Women’s Rights.

This is the real attack on our right to choose. The party that claims to be protectors of that right has put a huge asterisk next to it.

The difference between the Party of Mama Grizzly and the Party of Papa Stupak is no difference at all. There is no party of women’s rights, just a system meant to restrict those rights thus keeping them in perpetual limbo. The Mama Grizzly party’s stated aims are actually more or less consistent with that agenda, so at least they are more honest about what they are up to. The Democrats pretend to protect women’s rights only to sell them out.

This is not acceptable. Listen to Eleanor’s Advice! Don’t Mess with Women’s Rights:

“The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.” –First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

The damage done with Stupakistan is two-fold:

On the practical level of the equity argument, poor women should have the same freedom, access, and ability to exercise their choice on abortion as wealthy women do. The reverse should not essentially be codified into law.

And, on a fundamental level of political freedom, it keeps women still vulnerable in the back alley of politics, with the figurative choice between a coathanger (Democrats) or barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (Republicans). When American women are unable to exercise their full political voices and devote them completely to fighting for or against the meat of public policy–because they’re stuck fighting for their BASIC human rights–this does not just hurt women, it hurts all Americans.

This is what happened on healthcare. Our energies were diverted by the Stupakistan gambit when we could have used that energy to fight for a Medicare expansion rather than Obama’s mandated junk insurance.

And, it doesn’t just stop there. The Stupaksis disease is spreading across the country. This is a spreadsheet called State Legislation Enacted in 2010 Related to Reproductive Health. I’d put the entire spreadsheet here if it wasn’t so big. You really need to see this chart if you haven’t already. It is creepy. I was horrified the first time I saw it and that horror is etched into my brain. Ordinary Americans are alive and suffering in this economy and state governments are going nuts passing gibberish amendments such as Requires Provider to Inform a Woman That Abortion Ends “the Life of a Separate, Unique, Living Human Being” and “Considers Some Miscarriages Murder.”

What fresh hell is this? All under a Democratic president, a Democratic Congress, and a Democratic female Speaker of the House. Do you feel very safe and protected reading that spreadsheet? I don’t.

When the chosen method of protection doesn’t work, a different method of protection is needed. (Pun accidental.)

We recently celebrated the 90th birthday of our 19^th Amendment. It’s rather surreal that less than a century ago, a woman’s right to vote was also an asterisk that had to be resolved. Of course a lot has improved for women in that time. But, in other ways, the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same.

I ask you to remember the suffragists themselves and how they got us the vote. They didn’t get us the vote by falling for the strawman that they had to support Democrats or else the Republicans would win.

The truth is: the Democratic party needs our rights in limbo because it keeps us hostage to the Politics of No Place Else to Go. If they can convince most of us that we still need them to protect our reproductive rights from the GOP, whose assault on our rights is 2% more evil than the Dems’ assault on our rights, then they sure as hell don’t have to do anything to earn our votes.

I don’t think it makes a difference if the current lot of Ds is in charge or the GOP is… it’s an illusion… because really it’s one party all in power…a giant party elite orgy that both sides are equal participants in… they just rotate who gets to drink more from the corporate cash trough every 4-8 years.

One of the crucial mechanisms that they use to keep this system rigged is by keeping fundamental human rights hanging in the balance. The other is the politics of divide and conquer. Women, LGBT, workers, immigrants, religious, racial, and ethnic minorities, older voters, younger voters, and so on and so forth… ordinary Americans under the bus, no place else to go, pit against each other and stuck fighting for our most basic rights and any semblance of a safety net while we are stuck in endless unnecessary war, our Constitution under attack, our economy and standard of living unraveling at the seams. Meanwhile our politicians allow the country to be swept up in “controversies” that are not the problem, the solution, or the point? That is the real threat playing into the hands of extremists of all sorts who wish to see our way of life deteriorate.

As Maggie Williams said during the Hillary campaign in 2008:

We will not be distracted.

November is getting closer. Many of us are not exactly feeling our most confident about how to make our voices heard and our votes meaningful when the choice is between worthless Democrats who run as “Independent conservatives” and Republicans who run as batshit insane.

I’ll leave you again with what Mother Jones said:

“I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country! You don’t need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!”