ANALYSIS: Palin Choice Will Pay Off Politically for McCain

One of the best ways to tell whether a candidate's move was a good more or not is to look at the response from the other candidate. So, what do we have from the Obama campaign with respect to the Palin choice?

First, there was this from Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Gov. Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil, and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same.

Then came this joint statement from Obama and Biden:

We send our congratulations to Gov. Sarah Palin and her family on her designation as the Republican nominee for vice president. It is yet another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics. While we obviously have differences over how best to lead this country forward, Gov. Palin is an admirable person and will add a compelling new voice to this campaign.

Finally came this "clarification" from Obama himself:

I think that, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers. The statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments.

The word "disjointed" comes to mind.

Now, the Democrats finally appear to be coalescing around a single talking point: Palin's lack of experience disqualifies her from being vice president.

This would be a great argument . . . if both Obama and Biden had unquestionable experience. But there's a problem here. In the primary, Obama won for one main reason--he shifted the argument from the need for experience to the need for change. The democrats are treading on dangerous ground here (and, in fact, you're hearing less of this talking point today), because by focusing on the inexperience at the bottom of the Republican ticket, they risk shifting focus to the inexperience at the top of the Democratic ticket.

This alone is enough to put the Democrats in a bit of a bind. But, add in the fact that she's a woman, and the Democrats might find themselves in a very touchy situation. In other years, this might not be such a problem, but already this year, many democrats--from Chris Matthews to Barack Obama himself--have either been explicitly or implicitly accused of sexism. That certainly makes criticizing Palin a dicey proposition.

Of course, the other danger in all of this is that the Democrats will lower expectations to the point that she absolutely can't fail. (Already, Jonathan Alter has predicted a "belly-flop").

Perhaps that is why the latest Obama commercial is probably the weakest ever from the campaign, and doesn't really even discuss Palin:







For once, it appears that the McCain campaign has beat the media (and the Democrats, if you separate the two) at their own game. Poor Keith Olbermann had only a few hours to brag about Barack Obama's speech before the McCain campaign basically stole the spotlight. Almost all of the coverage yesterday and today has been about the VP pick, and by the time the Democrats get their talking points aligned, they will be mostly drowned out by coverage of the RNC convention and Hurricane Gustav. (You might have noticed that Democrats could hardly contain themselves as they began hearing that Gustav might strike during the convention, and now Michael Moore has apparently quit trying to keep up appearances. Now, I'm not so sure that this will be good for the Democrats.)

Ultimately, of course, the only thing that matters is whether voters like the choice. Democrats seem self-assured that this won't affect anything because Hillary Clinton voters won't switch to Palin because of her views on issues relating to women. But this misses the point. Palin doesn't need every single Hillary Clinton voter. She needs a few, and she'll get them. Not the most liberal, but rather the ones who truly were excited about a woman finally breaking the glass ceiling. The Democratic ticket no longer offers these women voters the ability to break that glass ceiling, while the Republican ticket does. If Palin can get a good number of these voters, as well as getting a good number of conservatives who had previously been disheartened by the choice of McCain for the top of the ticket, then there's a good chance that McCain will be the next President.

The irony, of course, is that if McCain's plan works, his choice of the relatively inexperienced Palin will result in the most experienced presidential candidate becoming president.

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PS: All of this ignores the possibility that some unknown scandal will arise, or that the State Trooper scandal will erupt. It's obvious that the McCain campaign knew about this, and one can only presume that they have some assurance that there's nothing to this and that it will all go away. For more on that scandal, visit the Flopping Aces blog.