Why Palin Is Suddenly Scaring Some Dems

There’s a bizarre unease among the Democratic commentariat today – a vague feeling that Palin did something pretty good last night, and whatever it is, it might be trouble. No one seems quite sure what it is, so let me try to articulate:

Palin is the first person on a Presidential ticket in thirty years who isn’t rich. Who is genuinely middle-class, without any need for artifice or guise.

With the country in a populist mood, it makes her “elite-bashing” surprisingly authentic, honest, and effective. (Even if still mindlessly stupid).

Of course, the GOP has been bashing elites ever since Nixon told us in 1952 that he and Checkers had earned every penny they’d got.

But the problem has always been that most Republicans are charter members of the elite – multi-millionaires like Romney, McCain, the Bushes, Cheney, Quail, Reagan….even old Tricky Dick, who by 1968 had made more than enough to live in comfort as a Manhattan lawyer. (TNR pointed out that the average Wasalia citizen would have to work for ten years to afford Cindy McCain’s outfit last night).

To be sure, the GOP still does an amazing job of pretending to be jus’ folks, with the ludicrous “cultural” signals we’ve come to know and love: clearing brush, mispronouncing words, trashing your own Ivy League diploma, etc.

But there is a natural limit to the effectiveness of this message, because the messenger himself isn’t an average American—he’s an elite in every possible meaning of the word. This tension is something most Americans vaguely understand -- sometimes clearly (1992), sometimes not so much (2000, when their gullibility particularly infuriated liberals).

Dems, of course, share this problem from another angle: professing economic solidarity with the middle class, but nominating candidates who are still, well, rich (as a commenter to my Biden post noted).

In short, everyone is for the regular guy. But no one is a regular guy.

But now we have a regular old girl.

Palin’s family has never made serious money, not before she took office, not after. So, for the first time in a generation, her elite-bashing doesn’t need to come with an asterisk or a caveat, and that's the 'authenticity' people are sensing today.

(Postscript: I personally thought her speech was insipid and grating – like watching someone interview for the Women’s-Wear-Over-50 counter at Macy’s. The burgeoning scandals and her embarrassing lack of experience will frame her candidacy in the end, I'm confident. But I thought I’d try to explain why we're stuck with this "She's a New Star!!" narrative for a couple of days at least.)