The Palin pick

[tagryn]

wrote this up for elfs' journal. I'll comment on the McCain speech shortly.

I thought (choosing Palin) was a diabolically clever choice. It shores up his right wing support in the GOP - they're almost universally in love with the pick - while nullifying some of the "We're making HISTORY!!!" advantage of the Obama side. It aims at a serious fissure in the Democrat party, while stealing the media spotlight from Obama's speech. Most importantly for the GOP it injected some much-needed energy going into their convention, something that would have continued to be lacking with a "safe" pick like Romney or Pawlenty.

Frankly, given their stumbles so far, I didn't think the McCain camp had the campaign acumen to come up with something like this.

It presents some interesting campaign problems. The experience debate is a losing one for the Democrats, since it has a simple response: if experience is a biggie, why isn't Biden the POTUS candidate and Obama the VP pick? The Downs baby argument will be trouble with some feminist (Hillary) supporters, since it has an underlying sexist assumption that the woman should be the one staying at home with the kids; it also brings the abortion issue into play, something Obama has not wanted to take on. The investigation into the ex-brother-in-law's firing is probably the best attack angle, though it isn't a perfect open-and-shut case either since a lot of voters if they read about the details of the case will conclude "Guy was a bad cop, he should have been fired."