After All These Years, Sarah Palin Can Still Make Us Cringe

Your Alaska congressional debate wrap-up.

Rep. Mary Peltola (D) was sworn in as Alaska's only member of the House in September, and here she is running again already, this time for re-election to a full two-year term. Peltola's running against the same three candidates she beat in the August special election to serve out the term of the late Don Young, the Republican who'd held the seat for 49 years — since before the construction of the Alaska pipeline, for perspective.

Last night, Peltola debated Republicans Nick Begich III and Sarah Palin — you may have heard of her — and Libertarian comic relief candidate Chris Bye, who are all on the ballot in November in Alaska's fun new ranked-choice voting system. To win, a candidate has to get more than 50 percent of the vote, which looks unlikely. Iin August, Peltola finished first, Palin second, and Begich third in the count of voters' first choices, but all were under 50. Begich voters' second choices then were reassigned to the top two candidates, putting Peltola on top and over 50 after lots of Begich voters chose Peltola second or left their ballots blank rather than pick Palin as their second choice.

This time around, polling suggests that Peltola is likely to pick up enough second-and-third-choice votes to win, but you can't guarantee anything. But both Palin and Begich have been urging their supporters to "rank the red" this time — that is, give their second-choice vote to the other Republican — which could result in an upset.

The debate last night gave Peltola the chance to stand out as a solidly moderate reddish-purple-state Democrat, an important consideration in a state that went to Donald Trump by 10 points in 2020. And the debate featured a lot of talk about the candidates' willingness to cooperate, even though it was downright bizarre hearing Sarah Goddamn Palin condemning the "politics of personal destruction" — not that she meant it.

Here's Alaska Public Media's video of the hourlong debate; it's worth pointing out how much better a TV debate goes when it's organized by public broadcasting than by a local teevee station, too.

 youtu.be 

Here's the problem we have writing about this debate: Sarah Palin is still so flamboyantly awful that she outstinks everyone else in the room. This is not to say that Peltola came off looking bland — Begich managed that one just fine all on his own — but Peltola's reasonable pragmatism could sometimes be overpowered by Palin's thousand-watt weirdness and her constant dredging up of old tropes from that one time when she was an old man's vice-presidential candidate.

Palin got to take the first question on a coin toss, and immediately emphasized that she was there as a one-woman clip show. What should be done to improve the US economy? "We need to DRILL, BABY DRILL!" she said, adding that "Energy costs are the driver of inflation," but not mentioning that energy prices have mostly been climbing because of increased post-pandemic demand, plus Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Palin returned several times to that 2008 catchphrase, complaining that Joe Biden is out to decrease reliance on fossil fuels, because he's just mean and wants to keep large parts of the planet habitable.

Peltola — somewhat surprisingly — agreed that the US economy is in recession, which is very debatable, and point out that for Alaskans, that's compounded by the costs of shipping goods to the state. She noted that she has been advocating for a Conoco-Phillips oil project in Western Alaska that we believe frankly shouldn't go through, because hello, climate emergency. But that's Alaska politics. She moved on quickly to praising the CHIPS and Science Act for its potential to help straighten out supply chains.

Begich then had his chance, blaming Joe Biden for inflation and noting that the "price of a Thanksgiving turkey is 75 percent higher than last year," which is primarily due to bird flu, not to the American Rescue Plan. But at least it offered us the excuse to remind you of another iconic Sarah Palin nostalgia moment:  

Peltola also stood out from the others onstage when it came to questions about particular Biden administration policies; she was the only candidate to say she supported student loan forgiveness, adding that it was important to her that loans for vocational and technical training also be covered (which they are).

Palin followed on by saying that nobody should have their loans forgiven, but if we do have forgiveness, by golly it should have to include vo-tech. (She seemed to misinterpret Peltola's answer, and was very indignant on behalf of vo-tech borrowers being excluded, which no they haven't been.)

On the pandemic, Palin explained that the COVID crisis "was more about control than it was about a virus," and said the government can never mandate vaccines. Begich and Bye agreed that would be horrible, apparently unaware that kids have to be vaccinated to attend public schools. Peltola should have pointed that out, but at least said that while she's not sure any vaccine should be mandated nationally, we do need to take COVID seriously.

At another point in the debate, Peltola, who served in the state lege when Palin was governor for half a term, emphasized her bipartisan bona fides, calling excessive partisanship "the number-one threat to our country both in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy," and noting that American politics too often involves "a tradition [...] of tearing one another down, just to get into office."

During a segment in which candidates were asked to ask each other questions, Peltola returned to that theme: "We worked very well together in Juneau for two years and you worked very well in a bipartisan way, at least the folks on the House side," she said to Palin, adding that "those were two of the best years I had out of my 10 years because of the good working relationship."

Palin replied with what looked like aggressive chumminess, like she was the Mean Girl explaining that really we're all friends and THEY just don't get us, do they? It was some Good Old Palin Rambling, to be sure:

"You know, it's so funny that even in this race, people actually hold our friendship against us," Palin said. "They act like, oh we're not really committed to the planks in our individual platforms because our platforms are quite, they're not adverse, but they're quite opposite of one another." [...]

"In this day and age of so much division, so much politics and personal destruction and lies in campaigns especially, it's quite disheartening. So it is heartening to get to stand beside somebody who gets it. Maybe it's kind of that Alaskan chick thing, you know. Tough Alaskans, commercial fish, we were pregnant at the same time in office — took some heat for that, too. On and on, personally speaking and professionally, let that be an example."

Tough Alaskans, commercial fish, we were pregnant at the same time, you betcha. It was genuinely weird to see Palin pulling out that Sister Act, particularly since she had complained earlier this week in an op-ed in the Alaska Daily News that ranked-choice voting had "produced the travesty of sending a Democrat to Congress to represent Alaska, one of the reddest states in the country." But golly, isn't it nice she can be such good friends with the travesty?

In the same piece, the nice lady who loves tough Alaska chicks and hates personal attacks insisted that ranked-choice voting, which Alaskans voted for, had actually been "set up for the express purpose of making sure that Republican-in-name-only Sen. Lisa Murkowski could keep her job."

Shortly after explaining how much she hearts Peltola and bipartisanship, Palin couldn't quite bring herself to say she could vote for bills advanced by Democrats, because after all, "in D.C. today, you know, Barack Obama is still — he's calling a lot of these shots." With yet another throwback to 2008, she warned that Obama "promised to fundamentally transform America. So if a bill came over that represented anything that he's representing, absolutely not will I work on it." (Yes, that quote is correct.)

Good to see she's not stuck in the past like a high school quarterback endlessly reliving the Big Game. Also, for laughs, Palin constantly talked about herself as the candidate with the most political experience — two years as governor — casually ignoring the decade-plus that Peltola has served, both in the state Lege and as an administrator in state and tribal agencies.

Oh, also Begich doesn't like bipartisanship because he has to stand up to socialist Democrats, and Bye, the Libertarian, kept popping in to say both parties are out to get the little guy.

Also too, somehow the entire debate went by without a question about abortion, how did THAT happen, the end

[ AP / CBS News ]

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