The female vote

As blue as our state is, it's not so blue that a freewheeling Republican like John McCain couldn't win here.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen now. After traveling around the state these past two weeks, I think I can pinpoint the precise day McCain lost it.

August 29, 2008. The day he picked Sarah Palin.

It seemed like a smart choice at the time. There are 200,000 more female voters here than male. It's nearly impossible to win this state without carrying the female vote. Especially independent women.

What an irony Palin turned out to be. Nothing seems to be driving women to Barack Obama faster than the first female on a national ticket in 24 years.

Like Patricia West, a retired teacher from Mount Vernon. She was considering McCain last summer. Not any more.

"It's such a letdown, it's so obvious she's unqualified," said West, 71. "What gets me is the only reason she's in there is because she has two X chromosomes. That's as cynical and as sexist as if they'd excluded someone for being a woman."

I heard this theme from women across the state. That Palin's a token. Worse — and this is clearly unfair, but it's the trailblazer's curse — is a sense she's somehow setting back the clock for all women.

Belinda Luscombe summed up this sisterhood resentment in a recent essay in Time magazine: "Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin."

"Every time a woman gets a plum job" and "things don't go well," she wrote, "women are the first to turn on her for making it harder for the rest of us to louse up at work."

There hasn't been much polling in this state, but the latest — on Oct. 2 — showed women favoring Obama by 15 points. That's up from five in early September. Among the four candidates, Palin is the only one with a "favorability" rating below 50 percent.

It's not all about her conservative politics, either.

"She scares me," said Brenda Starkey, a wood crafter in Ferry County. Starkey's no liberal — she was in the Navy, and says she still may vote for McCain because "he's a good guy who will do his best."

"But Palin — ugh. She's not at all ready to run the country."

Or take Julie Follette, a 25-year-old coffee barista in Issaquah who voted for George W. Bush last time.

"Look, I love women," she said, "but you have to be able to put together a complete sentence. You know, like when you're talking to those doggone foreign leaders?"

Follette then winked at me. She designed the wink to be Palinesque — "as perky as it is phony."

I met some Palin fans, too. One, Shelley Brady of Spokane, was wearing a "Go Sarah Go" bumper sticker. She conceded Palin is no policy expert or world traveler. But that's not the essential point of Palin.

"I like her because she's not like the rest of them," Brady said. "She's not of the political class. She's more like us."

That is appealing. It's also the problem.

What I heard most women saying was this: It may not be fair, but the woman to smash the ultimate glass ceiling isn't going to be one of us.

She's going to have to be a hell of a lot better than us.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.