If Senator Obama picked Senator Clinton as his running mate, we would have never heard of Governor Palin and this election would be a slam dunk for the Democrats. Now, because of identity politics and evil brilliance on the part of the always underestimated Senator McCain, it is conceivable that Senator Obama may lose.

If we have for more years of a Republican administration, part of the blame will fall to Obama's poor decision.

You may have a point there. However, one of the similarities between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin (actually, probably the only one) is that people either love them or loathe them. Had Obama chosen Clinton, there would have been a huge number of people upset about that too. There are alot of Hillary haters out there -- just as many haters as Hillary lovers -- and not just on the Republican side of the aisle. So if Obama had chosen Hillary, he may have had a different but just as significant a problem.

I also think that the reason Obama didn't choose her has alot to do with his not being confident in his ability to trust Bill Clinton -- that guy is a loose cannon as he proved over and over again on the campaign trail.

I included myself in that group for a long time, until Sarah Palin was thrust upon the American voters. One thing I can thank that shrieking harpy for is teaching me, once again, to never say never.

Now, because of identity politics and evil brilliance on the part of the always underestimated Senator McCain,

I don't know if it was brilliant, infact I thought it was pretty obvious. A few weeks before McCain announced his vp selection I told my boyfriend it would either be a woman or a black guy.

While I agree about your point on 'love her or hate her' as the one commonality -- why is it that strong women are always polarizing? -- my point is that, even with the negatives, he would have won with Hillary on the ticket. To me, winning is the point to this first and foremost. The Bill problem could have been figured out in December.

Biden is a great guy and I am a tremendous fan but, lets face it, he's not very compelling. An Obama-Clinton ticket would have gotten all of the attention and that would have been enough to put him over the top.

Oh, well.

For me, my issue with Hillary was that we all saw her on 60 Minutes all those years ago talking about what a strong independent woman she was, not some "Tammy Wynette that's going to bake cookies and stand by her man," or whatever it was. I can't remember the direct quote now. Then, a few years later when the Monica Scandal broke, she did exactly that -- stood by her man. And we found out that Bill had a pattern of infidelities! I never was able to get all the way over that, and that's why I couldn't get behind her during the primaries.

With Sarah Palin my issue is pretty simple -- I think she's a lunatic extremist and she and people like her scare me more than Al Quaeda does.

Now, a strong woman like Elizabeth Dole or Christine Todd Whitman would not have bothered me at all -- in fact I might have been swayed to vote for McCain even though I've been leaning left all along.

Was Condi Rice not interested in the job? If you're going to play identity politics why not go all in?

Has Palin really become that polarizing so quickly?

I'm not saying she won't or couldn't be, just that so far so few people know much about her that I'd hope that the majority are holding off on making up their mind until they have a real and demonstrated basis for doing so. Even Hillary took some time to get to where there were very few in her "undecided" column.

Well, this is just my own experience, but the people I've talked to so far either have that slavishly devoted sycophant-like ardor for her that we saw at the RNC while she smirked and snarked her way through her speech. Or, like me, the very sight of her, much less the idea of her possibly being President, makes their skin crawl as they think about women losing the right to choose, books being banned from libraries, and having to pay to send their children to private school to get a secular education and not be taught creationism.

bmgreene:

Was Condi Rice not interested in the job? If you're going to play identity politics why not go all in?

Funny enough I had read articles about people from the McCain camp talking to Condi Rice about the position. To me it was just obvious they were going to pick a woman because the McCain camp had to put itself in a position to contest Obama's successful change strategy.

Those are all scary prospects, although we've had a president for almost 8 years now who's anti-choice (and even had his own party with a majority in the legislature which McCain/Palin is unlikely to have) and other than re-instituting his father's "gag rule" early on he hasn't accomplished much against abortion, even with his SC picks (didn't either Roberts or Alito side with the "pro-Roe" side in the most recent abortion related case they heard?). The schools issue doesn't get me too excised, but that's more a combination of the fact that I don't have or want kids and that I live in L.A. where parents generally have to send their kids to private schools to get a decent education (secular, parrocial or otherwise) since LAU has been on a steady decline for decades.