What the DNC needs to do is to have the quote from McCain saying his main criteria for choosing a VP is stepping in immediately with the quote of Sarah Palin asking, What does a VP do all day?

Someone else brought this up but I thought it was worthy of consideration.

What if the selection of Palin wasn't meant to shore up the few PUMA-type women, but the base of men?

- She's attractive.
- Former beauty pageant runner-up
- Into sports (used to be a sports reporter)
- Into guns
- Into hunting
- Girl next door appeal
- Less off-putting than McCain

I'd be interested in the polling men v. women to see the breakdown that way.

The Daily Show had a great bit on the Palin thing: Women don't vote with the big head, we vote with the little hood.

No, McCain, not any vagina will do...for women. For men? That remains to be seen.

Food for thought.

Margaret, not just the statement, but the video of her saying it on continuous loop.

I have to say that she isn't qualified to hold the public office of dog catcher if she's that fucking stupid.

i'm shocked that the percentage is greater than zero on the subject of palin's readiness to be commander in chief.

it goes to show that the US has a gambling epidemic.

MsJoanne, I think you may be giving McCain too much credit for this. As near as I can tell, he picked her with almost no deliberation and shockingly little vetting --- she was Plan B after he couldn't convince GOP leaders to let him pick Lieberman. This shows that McCain is, at base, a reckless gambler --- Bush without the prudence and thoughtfulness.

McCain on FNS: Palin is "a partner and a soulmate."

Well, considering the way that McCain was sorta leering at her during the press conference I think it seemed pretty clear that he did this because she's articulate, mysterious eyecandy.

McCain only met her twice before offering her the job-- and few others in the party know her-- which ultimately shows that he's more like Bush than any of us might have suspected. That's a quick "gut" decision if I ever heard of one. Which makes it extra risky if she ends up falling part because they're all passionately vouching for someone they barely know.

McCain might have hoped that it would help with some PUMA-type women, but I too think it might have more to do with appearling to white, blue collar men who might find her attractive on more than just a political level.

For christ's sake! She's not bad looking, but she's not Helen of Troy! The country is rapidly going down the toilet, and I highly doubt anyone will vote for McCai/Palin because she's cute.

He picked her to shore up the freaky christian vote. He had those anyway. Sure, this might "electrify" the right wing christian voters, but bet your bottom dollar it will really "electrify" Obama supporters.

A friend of mine lives in a VERY conservative area. Friday she was getting her car washed. A tv was on in the waiting area with the Palin news on. My friend was shocked that everyone in the room was angry...angry. "I'm not putting up with another four years of THIS!" was the general talk.

John McCain is throwing all of his eggs in the most extreme basket the Republican Party has. This will be remembered as one of the stupidest political blunders in memory.

Today the crowd booed her mention of Hillary Clinton. They lost any disgruntled Hillary supporters. They've drawn a line in the sand in a year when they're on the wrong side of the line. I still say we ill see some big name Republicans cut themselves lose from this.

No, McCain, not any vagina will do...for women. For men? That remains to be seen.

C'mon, give us some credit: Not just ANY vagina. We have standards, you know. In fact, she may be the ONLY republican woman who could pass that test.

I hope you're right, Saint Zak. I'm in a Moderate to conservative area, and people are fascinated and ecstatic.

Margaret I really think many people had had their fill of the Christian right. Too many people are hurting too badly now. There is no luxury of voting for a stunt like this. I say for every right wing Christian this energizes it will energize 10 people who are fed up with the last 8 years. McCain has put all of his eggs in the most extreme basket the Republican Party has. That's not going to win this election. Choosing a running mate to salve etremists isn't a smart move. Choosing a woefully unqualified running mate to salve extremist is astoundingly stupid.

Of course there's an initial burst of interest and publicity. There always is for car wrecks and freak shows. But when the sleeves get rolled up and the campaign reves up after the convention the Republicans will realize what a huge disaster they have on their hands.

Oh, and the crowd booed Palin's mention of Hillary Clinton today. That will energize alot of people...just not they way they hoped.

John McCain drew a line in the sand. This time, he's on the wrong side of that line.

Margaret - conservatives are easily fascinated and become ecstatic whenever they're told to by Rush, O'Reilly, Kristol, or their party leaders.

That 39% who think she's ready? That's 10 points higher than the baseline moron contingent in this country (people who still support Bush). Let's call this the "slow learner" demographic - they hung in there for Bush for quite a few years. I expect that number to go down as they learn more about her and her lack of experience, her radical views, and the abuse of power investigation going on in Alaska right now - but it will still hover around 35% since 2 months isn't long enough for most of the "slow learners" to catch on.

Lets not forget that Amercia knows nothing about Palin yet. And neither do we. We assume, with very good reason, she's not qualified. But most people surveyed do not access the information we access. And its labor day weekend, there is a massive hurricane heading towards NO. Whose really paying attention?

If Palin is a bad as we think, the message will get out and her support will drop.

We've got two long months before the election. The convention will paint her in a positive light so she'll get a bump. Then Obama will hit her on her extreme views. She'll be forced to defend them and many people will get turned off.

If she turns out to be really awful, then Obama will hit McCain on this point (indirectly). Hitting on this now is dangerous. Suppose she succesfful porjects herself as well informed and thoughtful?

As for men liking her, give me a break. Men are not going to vote bubblehead female to be president.

The females will move when they observe Palin speak. They will move further when they learn that the left is calling her sixteen-year-old daughter fat.

My very conservative neighbor (male) told me over barbecue last night that Neal Boortz said on his radio show that Palin is a shockingly awful pick for McCain. And my friend agrees.

I think that this pick is going to be a disaster for McCain. But Steve, I hope you will lay out any logic to the contrary of which you are aware.

Bush/Cheney won't be at the convention. So says CNN.

I’ve compiled some information that I think is relevant to the responsibilities of a presidential candidate in choosing a vice presidential running mate.

William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the U.S., died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, 31 days into his first term, at age 68.

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, was assassinated on April 15, 1861, 42 days into his 2nd term.

James Garfield, 20th President, was shot and fatally wounded by an assassin on July 2, 1881, 120 days into his 1st term. He died two months later.

William McKinley, 25th President, was shot and fatally wounded by an assassin on September 6, 1901, 6 months into his 2nd term. He died 8 days later.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President, died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, 83 days into his 4th term, at age 63.

Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President, was shot by a would-be assassin on March 30, 1981, 70 days into his 1st term, the bullet missing his heart by less than one inch and and piercing his left lung. He enjoyed a full recovery after successful surgery.

There’s got to be a campaign commercial in there somewhere!

Yes. Good point, Phil P.

We are in the process of electing the 44th president. Of the 43 before, 6 were not elected to the office (including Ford). That is, 5/36 or 16 % were VP at the time of the election. Ford can't be counted.

16 % is a really high number.

The daily tracking polling for Rasmussen Reports is out for 8/31 and Obama only leads by 3 points among likely voters--exactly where he was a week ago.

Since selecting Palin for V.P., McCain's favorable rating from Independents has gone up 10 points to 64%.

As for the slap-back point that Obama doesn't have a lot of experience either, the most important thing to remember and for Obama supporters to say (carefully, of course): Obama was found attractive *in spite of* his inexperience. IOW, if he hadn't wowed people with perceived skills and talents, he wouldn't have made it. Note also the Harvard law degree, which you have to organize and be smart to get.

Brick Head Bill, the women will NOT move towards her. She has no views that the majority of women hold.

And the left are not calling her daughter fat, they are investigating whether she is the mother of the baby Palin claims she had four plus months ago - yet never showed any signs of being pregnant, while (I read) that her daughter was off of school for four months with "mono." Palin supposedly was in the lower states when her water broke, she then boarded a plane to return to AK. She supposedly knew her baby had Down syndrome and with her pro-life views, she willingly and knowingly put herself, her baby and an airplane full of other travelers at risk and inconvenience?

STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN!

Either way, she is either lying through her teeth or has absolutely no ability to think.

Jasper -- For me, McCain's pick didn't change the dynamics: it reinforced what I'd been seeing. McCain has given himself over to rovian tactics, pandering to the extreme right, caring not for his own beliefs and tenets but instead for what he hopes will simply get him elected. He's put ambition over morals.

He's drunk the koolaid and hoping the rest of us don't notice.

at 11:01am: My very conservative neighbor (male) told me over barbecue last night that Neal Boortz said on his radio show that Palin is a shockingly awful pick for McCain. And my friend agrees.

To provide some background... Neal Boortz is a Libertarian, and identifies with neither Republican or Democratic politics. Because Libertarians are staunch proponents of individual liberties versus greater government, he tends to be more towards the right of the spectrum than the left. Although he may pan the Palin choice, he has nothing better to say about either Biden or Obama.

I would doubt that his listener community would be likely to change their vote based on his view of Palin.

One recurring thought that seems to get buried in these threads, is the implied speculation on the likelihood that anyone would switch their choice of candidates based on the VP selection. Does any polling data actually support that people are changing their initial choice of candidate based on the VP pick? And are there really such independents that are more concerned with who is 2nd on the ticket that they will make that the basis of their vote?

Seems unlikely, but if there is solid data to support than I'm open to rethinking.

The real gravy is best served hot...

Seems to me two countervailing opinions on threads and blogs of late:

(1) Ignore Palin. Let the media expose her and McCain defend her. No need for Team-Barack to attack and risk the alienation of ardent feminists. Joe Biden needs to tiptoe too in the debate. Else he will seem like a bully.

(2) Expose her. Continuous loop her. Attack. Attack. Attack.

Here's my take: Go with (1) up until the debate with Joe. And then bring it on.

First, it will likely be the most watched veep debate in history. That's wonderful. Because it is the perfect time for Biden to finally lower the boom. The guy is smart, articulate, and experienced. Gravitas? He's the real gravy. He will forcefully defend the facts and his country. You think Palin is going to study hard to prepare? Good, because Joe will study even harder. This guy cares too much to get outwitted on the night of his life...

Let's face it: Edwards got munched and mulched by Cheney. We got off to a limp in 2004. Not this time. Not this debate. The key initial debate will not be lost! Joementum? Yes. But of the good kind. Count on it. Plan your November celebrations on it.

In the meanwhile...

Keep hammering the same old same old. Keep the focus of the attack there. Blast away until you ream a hole into America's consciousness. That will take some doing. Major memes need time to puncture and permeate. Don't open up any more fronts until the enemies defenses are so degraded, that you can pour a brigade of new ideas down the McSame-hole.

Among Democratic women -- including those who may be disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination -- 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.

I'm struggling to understand what these types of polling statistics actually tell you.

Does this mean that if you have a group of 100 Democratic women that were planning to support Hillary, then the Palin pick means 9 of them are now supporting McCain and 15 would support Obama?

Does that leave 76 women who have not yet made a choice? Could I therefore conclude that the Palin choice made no practicial difference to the basic views of these 76 women? I guess that prompts the question of how many of these women would plan to vote for McCain but now wouldn't because he selected Palin.

Confused...

First, 39% of Americans don't believe that Sarah Palin is ready to be President, anymore than 28% of Americans really support Boy George II's failed Presidency. They just know how they are supposed to answer the question to pollsters.

Second, as for Trig and deciding to carry a Down's Syndrome child to term. Very noble, shows that she has the support of her family, including her husband Todd who should of course, demonstrate it at every opportunity by at least carrying the child around when he's there.

Did you notice who was holding the baby?

As for men, sports and women. There are two kinds of male sports fans, the ones who watch men's sports, like football, and the ones who watch, say, women's basketball. Unless the latter is a larger proportion of the total than I think it is, Sarah Palin is not going to be all that big a mindless 'sale'.

Sarah Palin is a wingnut extremist and a rather conflicted one also. She's a gun nut but also for criminalizing abortion even for rape. So ask her this:

"Governor Palin, you say you oppose abortion even for victums of rape, but you also say you support an individual's right to own a gun to protect his or her liberty from government intrusion. When your reproduction police burst in on a woman having an abortion to get rid of the rapist whelp, and the doctor, nurses, parents and boyfriend whip out their guns and blow away the repoduction police, whose side will you be on?"

McCain has shown that he's willing to shoot for the moon if he feels that the benefits outweigh the risks. If Obama had had the same guts, he would have selected Hillary for the VP slot. He didn't, and McCain picked Palin... and totally changed the dynamics of the race.

A friend (who was a fervent Hillary supporter) and I were discussing this idea a good month or two before Obama chose his pick, and my argument was that, while it might attract the Hillary supporters more easily to Obama, I couldn't see Obama and Hillary working well together. And even in the primaries, the overall opinion of Hillary seemed to be that you either loved her or hated her. She seems to be a bit of a polarizing figure, and with her on the ticket, I really think Obama would've had a harder time reaching out to the wavering Republicans and undecideds in the center.

Biden was, as others have pointed out, a strong pick for governing. He's been in Washington a long time, yes, but that means he can give advice to Obama, who is still fairly new; he's an expert in foreign policy; he and Obama have worked together quite a bit before (they're on the same Senate committee, as I understand); and by all I've heard, while he's had one or two questionable votes (as anyone would after three decades in the senate), he's pretty well known and well-liked, more able to reach out to people who know him, but might not know Obama. In short, he provides a lot of additional advantages, things that Hillary couldn't, he'll work together better with Obama, and he shores up the areas where Obama is weakest.

It's a strong pick, and moreover it's a reasonable pick for Obama. If (hopefully when) he gets elected, Obama and Biden will be prepared. Palin doesn't even know what a VP does, has a large family to take care of (including a handicapped infant), and has never worked with McCain before. It's an attention-grabbing pick, but that's all it is. A popularity stunt. Once the novelty has faded, if they actually make it to the White House, you'll have an old man whose health might fail at any time, and an utter newbie who doesn't know anything about managing something as huge as the whole country. Is that really the pair you want as "Leaders of the Free World"?

Quaylin?

But somehow you conveniently forgot to explain the results of the Zogby poll huh? Figures you guys only feed your own agenda.

McCain/Palin at 47%, compared to 45% support for Obama/Biden
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews1547.html

I think that Democrats need to realize that choosing Palin was never an attempt by McCain to lure in disaffected HRC voters. HRC supporters are liberals. Palin is a born again Pentecostal/Assembly of God christain. She is not just pro-life, pro-gun christian; she is a creationist, and appears to be an end-of-time rapturist (http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0218/p11s01-lire.html). The Christian Right was tepid about McCain, now McCain will have their full backing, their money, their foot soldiers, their fervor. Liberals tend to think that Big Oil and Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex (i.e. the Republican Party) have been using and duping the luny evangelicals. But McCain's choice might make an end of times, temple rebuilding, Armageddon seeking Alaskan, VP, and possibly POTUS in 2012. The Cheney Administration's monkeying around in Georgia might create enough of a confrontation/conflict to push the Republicans over the top one more time. I am with Mencken on this:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

Here's an interesting read about Ms. Palin. This is a repost of an Alaskan blogger...one who follows Palin.

Some snips:

Here is my analysis of how differently the two genders react to Sarah. First, to both men and women she makes a “wow!� first impression. She is beautiful - and she, more than anyone else, knows this is her foundational appeal - that’s why she spends a tremendous amount of time getting her pedicures and manicures and hair extensions and shopping for the latest, greatest clothes and shoes. This is her primary appeal - her appearance. She knows this and focuses a lot of attention and time on this.

So, she makes a great first impression. If she’s working from a mostly memorized script or telepromptors she can come off sounding articulate. She can work a crowd in the rah, rah venue very well (like she did today in Ohio).

But here’s what happens - she’ll be asked a question that she clearly doesn’t know any specifics about and you can watch her pull out a 2-3 second delay wherein she is working feverishly to figure out what she is going to say. But during that little momentary delay she’ll sigh, or cock her head, or bat her eyes, or twist her lips, or some other kind of delay tactic.

Men and women respond very differently to this. Women see right away that she simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Men, on the other hand, watch this, and it has enough of a feeling of mild flirtation - that they just eat it up. It’s like some sort of weird eye candy for their soul, this little drawing her audience in to this playful exchange with, usually it involves her eyes. It’s so weird, and if I hadn’t watched this thing play itself out over and over and over the past years, I would think a post like this was crazy.

(snip)

But mark my words about the differences in how men and women respond to her - and keep your eyes open for the “Flirtatious Pause� that she is well known for. It only lasts for 2-3 seconds, but men and women respond completely differently to it.

Whoops...blew the tag. The rest of the prior post, from where the italics started, should have also been italicized.

In comparing Palin to Quayle, it's sobering to remember that the Bush/Quayle ticket won the election.

Some context. Palin's quote about "what does the VP do all day" was in a discussion where she opined that she is used to responsibility, used to doing things and NOT used to sitting around doing nothing. But, go right ahead and ignore that iceberg. What could possibly happen? And as to Biden and "gravitas" get real. He's a 2 time failure as a Presidential candidate and a plagarist to boot. Debate? Napoleon meet Waterloo.

Some context. Palin's quote about "what does the VP do all day" was in a discussion where she opined that she is used to responsibility, used to doing things and NOT used to sitting around doing nothing.

Actually, the next line of that was where she said she'd only be interested in the VP job if she could use it to bring back special favors for Alaska.

Be interesting if an "independent expenditure" group put together an ad with that quote, and asking the question of what McCain promised her to get her to accept...

Unfortunately, Bush I and Qyayle won in 1988 despite Quayle's obvious inexperience.

In regard to polling, we never see how the question was posed, and in the question is the context of the answer. I don't trust the numbers without first seeing the exact question. Was it posed in writing or orally? Was the subject of the question given the background of the question? Besides Yes or No, Agree or Disagree, etc. what else did they say? Watch a lawyer in court question the witness. A 'good lawyer' only asks questions to which he knows the answer, and which serve his client. Zogby, or Gallup or Rasmussan all have an agenda, depending on who is commissioning the survey. Raw statistics mean nothing outside of context. So, in my opinion, the slim lead of either candidate serves one purpose: the sale of commercial minutes. Since my bias is toward Obama, I suspect the narrow margins serve McCain in that it causes Obama to spend more of his campaign funds on advertising to counter McCain's false and misleading assertions, which the CSM will not counter voluntarily. Obama has to 'buy' his on-air time while McCain is given much free time by the CSM news outlets.

That is how I see it.

I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation
peace,
st john

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