John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist warns about the “ghost” of Sarah Palin, the last woman nominated as a major-party candidate for vice president.
What ensued was the greatest persecution of an American political figure in modern times. Palin, a mother of five who had recently given birth to a baby boy prenatally diagnosed with Downs Syndrome, became an object of hate for the media. Nothing has come close in its ugliness, its mendacity, its complete lack of restraint and, given Palin’s status as the second woman ever to appear on a major-party presidential ticket, the abject hypocrisy of a media establishment that purports to champion women’s rights and equality.
I say all this as prelude to what we are about to witness. In the coming months, a phalanx of mainstream media outlets and leftist women’s groups will be deployed to defend Sen. Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick, by labeling any and all criticism of her as sexist and possibly racist. (It remains unclear what we’re to make of Harris’s own charges against Biden of racism and sexism—and sexual assault—in the primaries earlier this year.) …
… Even before Biden announced Harris as his running mate on Tuesday, we’re told, she had already faced sexist attacks that play on negative stereotypes, like being “maligned online for a past relationship.” The Post story also quotes one Democratic opposition researcher who says we should expect “a flood of content playing on common sexist tropes: portraying her as crazy, untrustworthy, unqualified, dumb, or sexual—claiming she is angry, or extreme, or perhaps that she ‘slept her way to the top.’”
We’re going to hear a lot of that sort thing this election cycle. Because the double standard that’s about to be applied to Harris is so appallingly obvious even to corporate media, we’re also going to hear a lot of retroactive and transparently insincere sympathy for Palin.
