By ANNA HOLMES and REBECCA TRAISTER, Op-Ed Contributors for the New York Times

TWO years ago today, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee, introduced the world to his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. Chosen by Mr. McCain’s campaign strategists as a cynical rejoinder to the ill-starred presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, Governor Palin was a historic pick: the second woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket and the first Republican woman in history to do so.

In the 24 months since her appearance onstage in Dayton, Ohio, Ms. Palin has enthralled pundits and journalists who devote countless television hours and column inches to her every Twitter message and Facebook update, while provoking outrage and exasperation from the left. Case in point: Ms. Palin, now a Fox news contributor, and her cable colleague Glenn Beck planned a rally for Saturday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, a wily usurpation of an anniversary cherished by progressives and civil rights activists.

The left should be outraged and exasperated by all this — but at their own failings as much as Ms. Palin’s ascension. Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.

What makes this all the more frustrating, of course, is that progressives helped to give Ms. Palin her start; her political career was a natural outgrowth of feminist successes. As a teen, she played basketball thanks to Title IX; as an adult, she enjoyed a professional life made possible by the involvement of her load-bearing husband Todd, entering Alaska’s governor’s mansion at 42 with four children in tow and giving birth to a fifth while there.

Ms. Palin, in turn, has been making a greedy grab at claiming feminism as her own. She recently marked the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment by expressing her gratitude “to those brave feminist foremothers who struggled and sacrificed, endured imprisonment and ridicule … to grant future generations of American women a voice.” On the same day, she sent out this Twitter message: “Who hijacked the term ‘feminist’? A cackle of rads who want 2 crucify other women w/ whom they disagree on a singular issue.”

The hijacking accusation goes both ways. Ms. Palin’s infuriating ability to put a new twist on feminism — after decades of the word’s being besmirched by the right and the left — allows her to both distance herself from and accentuate the movement’s maligned reputation. Her new spin, of course, is that she does not support policies that move women forward.

You’d be forgiven for thinking she does. Ms. Palin has spent much of 2010 burnishing her political bona fides and extending her influence by way of the Mama Grizzlies, a gang of Sarah- approved, maverick-y female politicians looking to “take back” America with “common-sense” solutions.

Sure, the Grizzlies sound somewhat progressive on paper. But from their opposition to reproductive rights to their work against health care reform and labor policies that would empower American women, their ideas are just antiquated clichés dressed up in designer suits. Like Ms. Palin herself, their talk about being “mama bears” and “tough as an ox … wearing lipstick” simply reduces female candidates’ political prospects to maternal worth and sex appeal.

It’s easy of course, for liberals to laugh off Ms. Palin’s “you go, girl!” ethos and increasingly aggressive co-optation of feminist symbols. We progressives discount her references to the women’s movement — not to mention her validity as a candidate — by looking down on her as a dim, opportunistic, mean-girl prom queen, all spunk and no policy muscle.

Click here to read the full editorial.

Anna Holmes is the founding editor of the blog Jezebel. Rebecca Traister is the author of the forthcoming “Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women.”