Face it, we're quite possibly screwed.

Face it, we're quite possibly screwed.

Um, after finally watching Sarah Palin's speech from last night, I am struck at just how charismatic she is. I think all the folks vigorously discounting her, or hoping that American's common sense will guide them away from her, are in for a rude surprise. While she's not as intelligently spoken as Obama, she is a better speaker than he is. It turns my stomach. I guess I should gird myself for the possiblity of artifice trumping the better candidate yet again.

Some folks ask me why I think this way, and it's because I'm a single liberal in a family of conservatives. And I can't figure out why that is. My brother and his wife work hard to support their family, my other brother put himself through law school, and my mom has been heroically toiling away at an age when she should be retiring and enjoying herself. My whole family has college educations. They're intelligent people. Yet they still vote Republican year in and year out, even though that party's interests aren't really aligned with the realities of their day-to-day lives. Sure, i'd love a tax cut too, but Republican's don't really cut taxes for most of us, only the richest. They tout the dream of ordinary folks reaching the heights of the upper income brackets, and the freedom of living in those lofty branches, without ever admitting that you -- yes, you -- aren'tever going to get there. They sell empty dreams and promises, and they sell them through fear, and that makes my stomach turn.

I was watching the convention last night and while half of me was just slack-jawed that all those people were dancing so badly to country his, and waving their signs, and chanting "drill, baby, drill," the other half knew that what I was seeing was a reflection of the way lots and lots and lots of other Americans really feel. I wish each and every one of them would read Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas? since that might possibly wake them from the haze they're living under.

Here is the basic problem with Dems vs. Repubs this time around: Dems are actually trying to be honest with the voters for once and admit that electing them will not turn everything into peaches and cream instantly, while the Repubs are telling people what they want to hear, facts be damned. (Just look at the fact checking against Palin's speech last night. Do you think anyone really cares? Nope. They just liked what they heard.) Guess which one plays better to the crowd?

So, my fellow liberals, you can sit back and snicker at what you think is simplistic rhetoric, but you're doing so at great peril. Recent history has proven that grand ideas don't win elections, but deep deceptions do.