Well, to say that things have gone badly for The Obama/Biden ticket since the announcement of Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy would be a gross understatement. Some polls have a 20 point swing already in effect. Obama was leading by 8% and many thought the election over and that Obama’s star turn at Mile High was in effect an acceptance speech for the presidency, versus just the nomination.
Boy, were they wrong.Sarah Palin not only levelled the playing field, she’s taking a wrecking ball to the Obama campaign. The New York Times’, Thomas Friedman has opined that if Obama loses, it’s because ultimately, McCain wanted it more and that Obama has been losing more and more voters from his base as he drifts further and further to the center, a tried and untrue strategy that sunk both Kerry and Gore before him. Friedman urges Obama to find some fire and remind us why he’s actually doing this and why we should care.
The outsider feminist, Camille Paglia did a rip roaring piece in Salon about why Sarah Palin is re-invigorating not only conservative men and women, but women from The Left as well. In it she describes Palin’s Venus/Aries ascendant perfectly by calling her a “brand new style of muscular American feminsim.” She then goes onto state that, “Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.”
This ain’t your typical, archetypal, feminist at play in the fields of the lords.
With her Venus/Aries on the ascendant, she is part Venus, a classic beauty, part Diana, a huntress, bow pulled taut and aimed squarely at her target. Paglia has her own, modern archetypal assesment of Palin, “Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals.
“Beauty and ferocity, the hallmarks of both Venus and Aries sitting in Palin’s first house is now attracting women voters, disaffected from The Left, disappointed that their hope and vision, Hilary Clinton (a fallen Athena/Hera) will not be the person getting their vote in November.
Remember, there are three planets in Libra opposing Palin’s Aries Venus/Jupiter in her first house, so opposition, heavy opposition will continue through October, leading up to the debate, as I’ve previously discussed. But the Virgo Sun is moving through Palin’s sixth house where her natal Uranus and Pluto reside. It’s lighting up those transpersonal planets in a big way, moving and shaking cross sections of common folk, all represented by Virgo in plain (Palin) view.
Meanwhile, Libra is posing some serious challenges for Obama in his own chart. While Palin is confronted with opposition, those self-same Libran planets, Mercury, Venus and Mars are all transiting Obama’s twelfth house, the house of secrets and the dissolution of self. Libra is prompting Obama to go inward and find balance after being hit by the Palin/McCain tsunami. He’s quiet and reflective at this point, but can he afford to be? Will he and his campaign be able to weather the storm until Scorpio in Mars arrives on the 25th and gives Obama an added sense of force and purpose? But he also faces another Martian challenge as transiting Mars will conjunct his natal Neptune. This is what most astrologers would call a “malefic transit”. Conjunctions amplify power, but Mars and Neptune couldn’t be any different. Mars wants to conquer and take no prisoners, while Neptune wants to dissolve, merge, flow back into the universe and the spiritual mystery of being. It’s not a forward/backward motion, or forward/sideways motion. It’s forward and dissapear.
Obama can reach the masses in a big way if he can use the vulnerability and pathos often associated with Neptune and broadcast that to the world. if there was ever a time where Barack Obama could shed his elitist shadow and connect with the rest of us, it could take place in late-September. He needs to get horizontal with the suffering of the world in himself and find the energy to transform and heal on both a personal and collective level. He needs to get us to care about him again and the Mars/Neptune conjunction can do that.
However, Scorpio squares Leo and Mars will square his Leo Mercury/Sun/Uranus in that order. He needs to be particlarly careful about power and it’s abuses during this stretch. I can easily see some sort of power play in his relationship with Joe Biden come out in the open during that time. Biden (Scorpio) will feel emboldened by Mars (natal Mars/Scorpio) and take command in some way, likely against Obama’s wishes. The election will be decided during this critical three-week-stretch, from the last week of September, through the VP debate, and into Mercury retrograde in Libra which will definitely impact all four players. By the middle of October, up until a late surge for Obama at the end of the month, the race will likely be decided.
The challenge for Obama is to go deep, deeper than he’s ever gone before and ressurect a real feeling of hope and change for himself now, instead of the nation that he has been wooing with such glorified promise.