Ha. Ha. Ha.

[dreamshark]

This interesting link and analysis from electoral-vote.com:

Palin Is Dragging McCain Down

A new NY Times/CBS poll shows that 59% of the voters feel that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice President, let alone President. These people question McCain's ability to pick qualified people for his administration. The ironic thing is that the choice of Palin was probably forced on him by Steve Schmidt. McCain barely knew her (he met her once for 15 minutes), whereas he has traveled extensively with his long-time good friend Joe Lieberman. The choice of Lieberman would have enhanced McCain's maverick status, shown that he was willing to buck his own party ("Country first") and given the ticket an experienced politician who most people feel could be President (as demonstrated by polling in 2000). Schmidt undoubtedly told McCain that the base wouldn't accept him due to his pro-choice stance on abortion. The old McCain would have said: "Screw the base" to Schmidt, but McCain V2.0 did what he was told. If McCain loses, the conversation between McCain and Schmidt probably won't be real friendly.

And speaking of how the decision was made, check out this top secret audio of the voice mail McCain left for Palin the night he made his choice.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Usually the VP selection doesn't matter much (remember Agnew? Quayle?) but this time it does seem to have made a difference. The debate between Biden and Palin was the "gamechanger" that everyone was looking for, but it was the gamechanger for Obama. The conservative news media was so pro-McCain that they were only looking for him to improve, and utterly didn't see (or avoided seeing) the downside of his campaign.

In many ways, that's sad. It means that McCain stood a chance. I don't like voting against someone, and Obama is clearly the better candidate. I'd hate to think that the election was lost; I'd rather it be won.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Usually the VP selection doesn't matter much (remember Agnew? Quayle?)"

True, we the voters don't usually pay that much attention to VP qualification, which is unfortunate. Remember Agnew? You bet I do. I remember how horrifyingly close we came to having a President Agnew! Thank God Agnew resigned in disgrace (for having uncomfortably close ties with NJ mob bosses) slightly BEFORE Nixon resigned in disgrace (for completely unrelated reasons). Oh. My. God.

Admittedly, nothing could have influenced me to vote Republican in this election. But until McCain chose his running mate I wasn't waking up in the night with cold sweats.