In speech after speech at last week’s RNC, Republicans argued that one of Sarah Palin’s virtues as a candidate is her upbringing in a small town. It was a way for voters to connect with her and at the same time provided an opportunity to attack Obama for the cardinal sin of being too “cosmopolitan” (a phrase uttered without irony by the former mayor of one of the biggest cities in the world).
This is, at its core, political pandering and another type of identity politics. I won’t get into that too much here, but you can find my take on it over at Ablogistan. (For the record, I grew up in a town so small it could barely sustain a single movie theater or bowling alley, and I think there’s a ridiculous double standard: You’re accused of being elitist if you call someone from a small town bitter, but you can vilify another person because he/she happens to live in a city on one of the coasts).
But this is also interesting to examine as a (possibly effective) campaign strategy. Take a look at almost any electoral map and you’ll see concentrated spots of blue in a sea of varying shades of red. For a variety of reasons, including demographics, Democrats win major metropolitan areas in most regions of the country, and Republicans take smaller towns and rural areas, even in traditionally-Democratic states like California and Massachusetts. This trend will probably be even stronger this year considering the high concentrations of minorities in urban areas that will likely turn out for Obama.
The McCain campaign knows this. They aren’t going to win America’s cities. So they have two options: Try to compete in cities to narrow the margin of victory or isolate the urban areas and make sure the rest of the map is as red as possible.
If McCain can boost turnout in rural America, he might be able to offset Obama’s gains in urban America. Sarah Palin may be able to pull that off.
Whether it works depends on how effective Palin is when she finally submits to interviews, as well as turnout levels for Obama in both settings.