As I’ve noted before, Palin must be handled with extraordinary care. We have more than enough exposed nerve ends on the gender issue as it is. If ‘inexperience’ verges into perceived gender bias, Obama has a problem. Ditto, that BS about ‘who will take care of the children?’ Or any comments about appearance. Beyond that, the normal hardball attacks on male candidates have to be muted into a respectful tone, and Biden for example has to carefully avoid the wisecracks and focus on speaking positively on his experience and Obama’s knowledge of foreign policy to allow the voters to reach their own conclusions. Even so, it’s hard to control enthusiastic supporters, witness some of the extreme comments from fellow Obama supporters that convinced many Clinton voters that the campaign itself was perfused with sexism.

On top of gender issues, Palin clearly has energized the radical evangelical base, and McCain cannot win by abandoning them. The last few months and Obama’s choice of Biden dilutes the experience argument for some voters. Worst case, like Robert V, many Clinton voters will hold their noses and vote for him. Social issues will bring along another group of voters; the PUMA bunch can”t make a difference, despite all their noise. That minimizes McCain’s chances of pulling in one tranche of Clinton voters: relatively well educated and affluent urban and suburban Dems and requires him to tilt right. (I know, McCain wanted Holy Joe, but IMO this is how his advisors convinced him to choose Palin.)

But that doesn’t account for all the Clinton supporters. There’s a far different constituency of vague Dems and independents. much less concerned about choice and environment and much more focused on their own daily lives, as they should be. They’re going to find her very likable and plain spoken, and she can address energy issues with greater perceived expertise than McCain can. In fact, he may designate her a spokesperson on the issue. Those voters are likely to remain disinterested in her support for Buchanan, her disregard for the environment, her support for intelligent design and her extreme social positions - in fact, they may find them comforting. Foreign policy expertise? No disrespect, but while this cohort reacts to testosterone dripping GOP language, they just are not into the nuances of foreign policy once you get beyond terrorism. They are not as apt to connect her inexperience and apparent lack of interest with the difficult diplomatic circumstances we face.

She’s a working mother with a fisherman husband who’s found a way to combine politics with family life, she speaks their language and attacks on her risk both a gender backlash and a revival of the ‘elite’ argument. The Dems are confronted with two issues: gender and class. In the end, the latter could be decisive. It certainly compounds Obama’s difficulty in connecting with this group of voters.

Obama has served 12 years of elected service in Illinois and in the Senate. Being mayor of a 5000 population won and then Governor for under 2 years is not the same. SImilar league maybe but still less.
Also she has no experience with foriegn affairs, unlike Obama. She had no view on the Iraq war until early 2007. Obama laid out in detail in 2002 the issues he saw with the invasion so I think he has better judgement and experience than her.
But the real question is McCain’s judgement and temperment. It seems like he shots from the hip (or lip) and doesn`t think through the consequences. We have had that for 8 years, not another 4.

My bone here is with intellectual dishonesty, on all sides. And the believe that the American people buys this nonsense. For a brief, and absurd moment, I contemplated voting for John McCain. I have always had a warm spot for the guy. He does not seem like the kind of ideologue that the GOP right love to nominate. But he will not do. Not when he offers Scalia and Roberts to the SC. But to think that I for a second buy this crap about Obama’s qualifications is insulting.

What a lot of you fail to observe, our illustrious host included, is the level of anger and disgust that so many of us fell about the treatment that Hillary Clinton got from the most ardent Obama maniac, the main stream press and the Pelosi-Dean wing of the party. If Obama goes down in defect, well, this folks knew for the longest time that his candidacy was a marginal one at best. I am still convinced that HC would have been a better presidential candidate that Obama. But that issue is settled. The Obama camp better tread the Palin mine field carefully. Any impressions that they are going after the “monster”, or the “B word”, or the bimbo as I heard before, will get an awful lot of folks, that are already smarting about this, very angry.

Look at the polls, barely coming out of his nomination party, he is basically in an statistical dead heat with McCain. No looking good.

This is very risky for McCain because he is in essence admitting that he has chosen someone who is NOT ready to lead as of now. And will need on the job training. Ummm can`t see how Obama/Biden can now be attacked at all on these issues.

The selection has upsides - solidifying the base (which was happening anyway due to dislike of Obama) and strengthing his position in western states.
But he has lost two agruments against Obama - experience and putting country first. The GOP in previous elections have chosen the vunerability they want to pursue, for example elitism and flip-flopping with Kerry. They then attack on thos points for months and months. McCain’s campaign will essentially have to go back to the drawing board with 2 months to go and start new attacks.
She also doesn`t help McCain on the economy, but he had a limited range of picks.

The case against Palin. The biggest negative about the pick is that on its face, it looks like a political gimmick, a political calculation. And McCain’s supposed to be anything but a calculating or gimmicky pol. Indeed, as the Los Angeles Times wonders, isn’t McCain supposed to be the guy putting “country first” and not playing politics? The fact that McCain doesn’t know Palin and spent all but a couple of hours getting to know her before making his pick is going to invite A LOT of judgment criticism. The perception is going to be that McCain panicked and wanted to do something radical to shake up the race. Well, he may have shaken up the race, but at the cost of undermining his best asset: that he was ready to lead. This decision doesn’t look like it was well thought out, even as Palin has made a tremendous first impression.