lately it's seemed as though everyone with two neurons and a computer have been writing about our new girl du jour, sarah palin. it's time i join in the fray lest people think that i don't have an opinion.

i love sarah palin.

yup. you heard right.

and it's not just because i think she is hilarious, which i do. honestly, you cannot write fiction this good. there's a reason that the funniest tina fey bits are when she repeats the candidate's words verbatim, it is blurring the line between farse and reality. i honestly didn't know that the real sarah palin actually told katie couric that she'd 'get back to her' with some examples of mr mccain's voting for deregulation. that just HAD to be the snl writers, right? wrong.

but this is not why i love sarah palin. and it's certainly not for her policies. i feel like snl's version of hilary clinton, 'we don't agree on ANYTHING'. in terms of policy, the woman is genuinely frightening. yup, let's keep giving the rich tax breaks. we should definitely take away the right to choose, except when it's my family, then i want our privacy to be respected. it's definitely unpatriotic to criticism illegal wars. gays marrying would ruin this sacred institution, but forcing your underage daughter into a loveless marriage to ensure your viability as a evangelical conservative is a-ok. we've all heard all of this, so i'm going to stop.

the reason i love sarah palin is that she talks to people. she relates to them, and they relate to her. yes, apparently she is now worth $2 million, but you get a sense that she gets what it's like to live like a normal person. i like obama (even though i don't know if he'll get my vote, i'm still planning on writing in kucinich), and he can make a powerful speech (who remembers the 'race' speech of the primaries?), but there seems to be a disconnect between him and the average person. and it's not just obama. it's the vast majority of politicians and almost every single democrat. they wouldn't say things like 'like most americans i talk to, i am just sick about this bailout plan'. yes, the rest of palin's repsonse to that question was an absolute train wreck, and her analysis of the situation is straight ass backwards, but she seems to get it. at least a little.

it's the right's attempt to be populist, to put the people above those 'elites' they're always talking about. but hang on a second, who do republicans really care about?

the thing that i don't understand (although i'm starting to) is why no democrat can ever talk like this. listen, the sarah palins (and bushs) can talk all populist and then continue to fuck over 'the people' with every single economic policy. trickle down economy my ass. that shit don't work and we all know it. i'm going to tax health care benefits from your employer, but i'll say daggonit and wink. it's slick.

i want just one democrat to sound populist. imagine the power of a sarah palin-like person who could stand up and say, listen, health care is important and should be a higher priority than trillions in defense spending. education, too. daggonit. we're mad, we're frustrated, the government has failed us, i'm an outsider, and i'm kinda like you and we know how to fix this. hey joe six pack, don't you want better insurance? hey hockey moms, don't you think we've wasted enough money and precious lives on wars abroad? and who wants to keep sending their kids to shitty public schools? not ME! and who is worried about their savings while ceos that risked entire institutions gets millions in severance and retirement? I AM!

also they can't be an idiot. cause palin is a joke. and, populist or not, we do not want an idiot in one of the highest offices in the land.

i could go on for a while about why i don't think democrats talk like this, why they cannot be openly populist. but i won't, at least not now. i just want to say that i think it's a bit naive to brush off sarah palin as a back water hick and a republican hack. she certainly is the latter, but i think we often miss the fact that she is talking to a group of people who are pissed off, and rightfully so, about the state of the world in which they live. we need to stop making fun of her, and of this population more generally, and we need to start actively competing for their hearts, minds and votes.