Palin Energizes Alaskan Obama Supporters

When Billy and I were in a rural Texas county for their primary/caucus last February/March, we were surprised one Saturday when a family from Alaska showed up to volunteer. Brian and Andromeda and their two kids helped us for four days. Billy just mentioned them today in the RENObama discussion group, and I've been wondering how they feel about the Sarah Palin pick, so I asked them. Here's the reply:

Hi Dave, Great to hear from you! If I don't answer this email right away, I'll lose it -- ever since Sarah was chosen VP, it's been nearly impossible to keep up with email, with all the anti-Palin, rally-organizing emails flying around up here. (Which is a good thing, of course.) I'm attaching a photo someone sent me of the big rally held here last weekend. We were out of town and missed this one, but we'll be at the next one, which we hope will be even bigger, and our family was on the local news last night because we attended an Obama letter-writing party and the news guys wanted to film our 10-year-old daughter Tziporah writing a letter. Anything pro- or anti-Palin makes the news up here.

When Palin was chosen, Obama campaigners seemed to lose hope in winning Alaska, but within a week or so the anti-Palin backlash had become so strong that I think it's too early to give up. I wasn't strongly against her as our governor (I didn't vote for her, of course, but once she was in, I thought she'd be better than the previous Republicans and wanted to give her a nonpartisan chance). But even those of us in the state who THOUGHT we knew about her learned a whole lot more once there was more investigative energy spent uncovering her religious background and right-wing actions as mayor of little Wasilla. She's not only very socially conservative, but more worrying to me, she seems like the ideal puppet, so eager to climb fast that she'll say and do anything. A perfect vehicle for a 3rd Bush Term.

But you know all that, no doubt. All I can add from the local view is that people are really energized up here, wanting to volunteer more than ever.

It was fun hearing from you. Keep up the good work!

Andromeda