Palin hates the bloggers

Oh noes111 I iz hated agin!

Two weeks ago we would have killed for a one on one sitdown with Sarah Palin. But now, while she tries really hard not to drool over that Senate seat that Ted Stevens' felony conviction and inexplicable, possible re-election win will open up, she keeps talkin' an' talkin' an' talkin'...

Ms. Palin directed most of her media criticism at liberal bloggers, whom she twice called, “those bloggers in their parents’ basement just talkin’ garbage.”

You know you want to see it again:



For the record, I blog upstairs, and I shower and do laundry in the basement. Though I bet the wifi would reach.

Meanwhile, Palin defenders hit a new low:

A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning after political analyst Michael Barone said "“The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby."

As for other 2012 players besides Palin, Ambinder notes:

By bankrolling opposition to same-sex marriage in California, the LDS church has earned some serious cred in social conservative circles.

And the Prop 8 protesters -- those who are now protesting the church -- are only fueling the impression that when it comes to standing up for "traditional marriage," the Mormon Church is where it's at.

This development has fascinating implications for 2012.

But Nate Silver--the breakout blogstar of 2008 at FiveThirtyEight--has the best take on the Prop 8 vote. There's a blame the minorities meme going around, but Nate says it's a generational thing:

If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.

The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that -- and there's no polite way to put this -- the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.

The OTHER California ballot measure, which may have a more subtle but just as big impact on the nation's politics, is Prop 11, which takes redistricting away from the legislature and sets up an Iowa-style commission. It's narrowly ahead, says Ballot Access News. Seems to be running better in GOP areas. AHnold ist term-limited, ja, und Republicans in KahleeFORnya must not be counting on a gubernatorial veto pen when the Census numbers come out in 2011.

California has long been a leader in the fine art of gerrymandering. With GIS mapping systems linked to voter and election returns databases, it's not even that hard anymore. But back in the `70s, Phil Burton did one of the all-time great gerrymanders in California, taking a dead-even delegation and getting a 27-18 Democratic majority. And he did it with pencil and paper and his brain.

In relatively homogeneous Iowa the commission setup is simple. But California has a fair number of majority black and Hispanic districts in the LA area, and court rulings have held that those need to be kept. Not sure if Prop 11 addresses that; in any case we all know it'll end up in court.

But who needs redistricting when you get all these Obama coattail wins, in Virginia and North Carolina and Ala-freakin'-BAMA. There were a few near-misses, too. (Or, as George Carlin would call them, near-hits.)