markfiend wrote:McCain is handing to Obama with his choice of Sarah Palin for running mate
- She won't bring in Clinton's supporters because she's anti-abortion.
- She disables the attacks on Obama's lack of experience because she doesn't have any either.
- She's rich.
- She disables the attacks on Michelle Obama for following the campaign trail because she's got small children, including a baby with Down's.
- Her lack of experience counts especially because McCain is old and not in the best of health.
- She supports the teaching of creationism in schools.
I'm going to put on my political science hat, Mark.
Judging by the local (i.e., American) reaction, a lot of Clinton supporters are turning toward McCain. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of them view the Obama campaign and the American media as having behaved in a fundamentally misogynist manner toward her during the primaries. Sure, some Clinton supporters will not support a pro-life candidate no matter what, but others think that breaking the glass ceiling is much more important. Palin's comment that Clinton created "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling has been
very well received by a lot of Clinton voters. Additionally, the Obama campaign has not moved very quickly to fulfill their promises to help retire the Clinton campaign debt. She will do the bare minimum to keep up appearances, all the while planning to run again in 2012 on the "I told you so" platform in the Dem primary. Bill has already become a bit of an anti-Obama loose cannon as well, and it's pretty clear that he's
very angry about the primary, still.
As for the experience issue, she has one thing that neither Obama, Biden, nor McCain actually have, namely, executive experience (which is relevant to an executive position). She has been mayor of a small town, governor of a large state that borders Canada (and, in the winter, Russia
), and been involved in running a commercial fishing operation. For the executive side of the equation, she has more experience than anyone else (historically, when Senators run for president, they lose against governors, etc, because of this lack of relevant experience. The Senate is designed to move slowly and deliberately, and therefore to require different virtues than the executive branch, which must be flexible, and in the words of the
Federalist "energetic").
She is wealthy, though my understanding is that it is not excessively so. Her husband works as a commercial fisherman and a roughneck, from what I gather, and while both of those positions would bring in a lot of money (because they are both dangerous jobs), I don't think money will be much of an issue in relation to her. Their family came by their wealth through hard work: he's an Eskimo and she's a middle class kid. They both worked their way up in the world, and that will resonate with a a lot of Americans.
I'm not sure how she disables the attacks on Michelle because she has a family. The attacks on Michelle have largely focused on alleged lack of patriotism and cronyism in relation to her hospital position.
On the experience issue, this is a legitimate problem. That being said, the inexperience factor is mitigated by the fact that she is in the understudy, not the lead position.
Finally, on the creationism issue, she has said "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum." That's hardly the same thing as advocating the teaching of creationism.
For the record, I would be much more comfortable with McCain or Clinton than with Obama, for the simple fact that I think (to use a timely example) neither Clinton nor McCain will be out of their league if they have to sit down at the negotiating table across from Vladimir Putin. I am afraid that if Obama were put in that position, old Vlad would eat him for lunch. I will honestly be very surprised if Obama wins in the fall. I think that the Democrats have made a mistake in nominating him. At this point, and for the last few months, "Generic Democrat" has been polling at about 20 points above any Republican. Obama, however, is in a statistical dead-heat with McCain (i.e., any differences are within the margin of error for the poll). He is under-performing the polls. I think this election would have been Hillary's to take. Obama can still win, but I think it will be very difficult. For example: in the Democratic primary, Clinton won a number of the large states that a Democrat has to carry in order to make it to the White House. That suggests that Obama will have an uphill fight in these states, and since most of them are blue collar states to begin with, the combination of former POW with pretty-lady-who-hunts-moose-and-is-married-to-a-roughneck-snowmobile-racer will be hard to beat, especially given that by September both of them will have children serving in Iraq. Obama can't afford to make mistakes, and so far, he seems to have made quite a few: calling rural, conservative voters "bitter" and saying that's why they "cling to God and guns;" giving a campaign speech in Berlin; and giving his Thursday night speech against the backdrop of a Greek temple combined with the Lincoln memorial. This also ignores the fact that Biden tends to shoot his mouth off at the worst possible moments. Technically, Obama has not run a good campaign so far, and he may already have passed the point of no return in terms of alienating independent voters (in this regard, Biden was a bad VP choice: he doesn't bring any new voting blocks to the ticket. He only appeals to people who would have voted for Obama anyway, and being a member of the Senate for 30 years undercuts the "change" aspect of the campaign. The choice of Palin, however, potentially brings a lot of people to the McCain camp--including social conservatives and evangelicals [who have been leery of McCain for a while], parents of disabled children [who may take comfort in having someone in high office who understands their concerns], and women [again, the glass ceiling issue]).
And let me add that this was a huge political gamble on McCain's part. Judging by the reaction it's gotten among voters, it may pay off quite well, but that doesn't make it any less of a gamble. Either way, this will be a much more interesting campaign than Dubya vs. The Ketchup Kid was.
