Didn't you used to be Sarah Palin?

A political obituary.

Perhaps it’s because it wouldn’t have made a difference about who controls the House of Representatives nor the Senate; perhaps it’s because the election was a few weeks ago; perhaps it’s because it’s the inexplicably late Thanksgiving holiday in the US; and perhaps it’s because it’s Alaska, a state most Americans only notice when Steven Seagal has blown it up.

I really don’t want to know where he’s pointing that camera.

But I’m still a little bit surprised how little attention that state’s ranked-choice election results are getting, especially the one for the House seat:

ABC News reports that Alaska's incumbent senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, is projected to win reelection against another Republican opponent, Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka, and that Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, is projected to win reelection to her at-large House seat against Republican challenger Sarah Palin.

The projections come after the Alaska Division of Elections on Wednesday night revealed the results of the state's new ranked-choice voting system and are some of the last outstanding races of the 2022 midterm elections.

Even with the Murkowski projection, power in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate remains at 50-49 since the last remaining Senate candidates in Alaska were both Republicans. The final outcome of the seat count in the Senate will be determined by a Dec. 6 runoff election in Georgia between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker.

With Peltola's projected win, Democrats have 213 seats in a Republican-controlled House.

[…]

Peltola, reelected as the first Democrat to occupy the seat since the early 1970s, faced a rematch with former Republican vice president nominee Palin -- and all the races were determined through a lengthy ranked-choice voting process because none of the candidates in the Alaska Senate or House races received 50% of the vote on Nov. 8.

First off, never let it be said that there’s such a thing as a 100% safe seat for either party. Alaska is a GOP stronghold now represented in the House by a Democrat and in the Senate by the RINOest of the RINOs. (That’s a compliment.)

It also might¹ be the last nail in the coffin of Sarah Palin’s political career, and the end of one of the strangest phenomena in recent American history. Well, actually, the rise of Sarah Palin seems downright normal compared to what’s happened since 2015. But you see my point.

Indeed, one could argue that Palin’s style, which reveled in its ignorance and faux populism, anticipated the MAGA movement by a few years. It’s not the last bit surprising that she jumped on the anti-vaxxer train a while back. (You won’t believe what happened next.)

So, yeah, I’m not gonna miss her. And yet, while most of the criticism of Sarah Palin was justified - I know, because I made a lot of it - much of it said more about her critics than about their target.