Or will Palin withdraw or be withdrawn?

I don't think that she'll drop out or be pulled. That would be a total meltdown of McCain's campaign. I don't think they could recover from that. It would royally piss off the christian right and the rest of the party would just lose what little enthusiasm they now have. Who would he then pick? Romney is already ticked off and Lieberman is a no go as far as the right wing is concerned.

Sure would like to she her drop off the ticket though!

edit:

Just came across this...

Intrade odds on Palin

She is a ridiculous candidate to be sure but no way they are withdrawing here. Too much at stake for them now they are committed. And it looks like Gustav has basically ruined the GOP convention. This is getting good, can't wait to see what else they find out about her.

Well, now that the holiday weekend is over, reporters have made their way to AK. Here is a report from Time magazine,

TIME - Mayor Palin: A Rough Record

Among other things, she, as mayor, requested to have certain books removed from the town library. Contending that language in these books offended certain residents.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the long term. Usually the VP choice garners news for a day or two then settles down, until the VP debate. That debate gets scant attention and then the presidential debates take center stage, and the VP choice is again forgotten.

Bush was able to recover just fine withdrawing Harriet Myers as a Supreme Court nominee. In theory, McCain could similarly bring out a "blockbuster" nominee to replace Palin.

In the end, I don't think it would change much. Democratic partisans would harsh on him either way. Republican partisans would love him, either way. Independents (arguably) don't care about these kinds of little details, but may be nudged by Democratic arguments about whether McCain will continue to do this sort of thing in the future.

True, but a Supreme court nomination garners no where near the mass media coverage that a general election does. If you asked 100 US citizens who was on the supreme court, much less who was nominated I'd be surprised(shocked) if you got above the 30% correct mark. I'd say if you could get even half of the people to name more than two of the justices I'd be surprised.

Not only that but Bush needed to garner support in the Congress for his choice, far from a nation wide popularity contest.

I agree normally the VP is no big deal to people. But if people start to see her as a joke it will definetly sway independents much more the Democrats way.

I think of the McCain campaign driving down a dark, curvey highway in winter when:

1) They realize they have hit a long patch of black ice and
2) Their campaign bus is pointed in the general direction of a huge tree

I think that the natural initial reaction is to let adrenaline go to work but to try to finess the steering to get past that tree. But as the tree gets closer I think there is a major urge to try more desperate maneuvers.

McCain in late September: "I have full faith in Sarah Palin and in discussions this week I implored her to reconsider, but Governor Palin's highest calling is to ensure the well-being of her hockey team...errrr,... FAMILY. I am grateful for Governor X's willingness to step in and answer the call of his John McCain...errr...COUNTRY!"

I think the "family first" aspect of Palin's withdrawal (she'll be the one to take the decision at least for our consumption) will still play great with the evangelicals and McCain will still have some residual bonus point for naming her. Now he just needs to identify his not-too-pro-choice alternate.

(edit: I realized that I have *been* to Wasilla. Filled up there.)

No, she's there for the long haul.

There is more substance to Ms. Palin than most people realize. She really did take on the old-boys network and won the Alaskan governership without any help from the Republican party. She does not deserve all the credit for this feat. The incumbent Governor, Frank Murkowski, pretty much defeated his own re-election bid through incredible arrogance if not downright malfeasance. Alaska is a small state population-wise, and I know people who not only know Sarah Palin, but consider themselves to be good friends. The image that she instills, among both friends and the general public, in a word is integrity, something rarely found in politicians above the village level.

That said, McCain has pretty much destroyed his own strongest argument against Obama. The claim that Obama lacks experience is disingenuous when McCain proposes a vice-presidential candidate with a whole two years of experience, a candidate more likely to succeed to the Presidency due to McCain's age than any VP candidate in the last 50 years. Actually, more likely than any VP candidate ever. But wait, I do Ms. Palin a disservice. Two years? No, that's discounting her time as mayor of Wasilla -- a town in Alaska so small it didn't even have a police department when she took office. Yeah, that'll have those Hamas hard-liners trembling in their boots.

Overall, though, it was probably a good move for McCain. It gave him a huge publicity boost, and then when the excitement dies down (which it shortly will) people will realize that even though Ms. Palin has few qualifications, they are voting for a President in the coming election, and that who is on the ticket for VP is pretty much irrelevant.

If I had anything to say about how the Obama campaign was run, I would want him to stress (1) that four more years of McBush will absolutely destroy what is left of the country [He'd be lying -- it is already too late, but lies are how people get elected]; and (2) if experience is so important, why did McCain pick the Mayor of Wasilla to be his potential successor? That tells me unequivocally that he is more interested in winning the election by any means than in what might be best for the country.

In the end, I won't be surprised if the Democrats manage to shoot themselves in the foot once again and give away yet another election. Long term (that is, any time frame more than four years) there will be no winners here. Whichever candidate and associates garner the most electoral votes month after next will be ending their political careers. The ship of state has already struck the iceberg, and now the participants are fighting to see who will be Captain of the Titanic.

tanstaafl.

I figure that there is probably a 50 percent chance that you are right. My "bus and black ice" argument may not fly, but on the other hand I think that the argument that "it would mean a total meltdown" for McCain campaign may not hold if they have a meltdown anyway.

The Republican loyalists interviewed by CNN certainly put on a shiny, hapy face over this, but I have to think there are some delegates in Minneapolis still wondering what the heck McCain was thinking.

Aside from the near-complete lack of experience, I think it is the trailer-trash aspects of this drama -- hubby DUI, teen pregnancy -- that amaze me. I have this feeling that *one* more unvetted trailer park revelation will do Palin in. But I am probably a snob and maybe put more weight on those factors than the republican base. New Reality Show? Blair House Granny?

Yes, strange that McCain neuters his own "experience" tactic.

HuffPost is now like Sarah Palin Central.

Of many articles, this seemed choice:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/31/palin-laughs-as-opponent_n_122776.html

So, Alaska, maybe the political dialogue is just a bit....different.

Perhaps Palin could run for Governor of Texas and have a few laughs signing execution warrants. True Believers.

Really? My understanding of the race is that the GOP bench wasn't very deep, and when the Murkowski thing happened, Palin was at the right place at the right time, and said all the right things about honest government and cleaning up corruption. In reality, though, other than not being old and not being a boy, she's definitely part of the network itself. She ran Ted Stevens' 527 group, and her widely-publicized stance against earmarks and the "bridge to nowhere" itself are politically expedident fabrications.

Where exactly did she earn this reputation as an honest reformer?



I'm sorry, but this sounds a lot like "he's the kind of President I'd want to have a beer with." The "image she instills" clearly seems to be at odds with her deeds as Governor.



It would be irrelevant if McCain were not 72 and didn't have a history of health problems. But he is, and he does, so it's VERY relevant. If Joe Biden (a decade younger than McCain) kicks the bucket, Obama picks another VP. If McCain throws a seven, we've got a hockey mom (soon to be hockey grandmom, I guess) running the show.



They've certainly shown a remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but this is the closest thing to a "gimmie" I can imagine. Current polling shows Obama in a landslide, and with the very significant anti-Palin response among the electorate, the RNC being scaled back due to Gustav, and the simple fact that McCain is an unexciting pick for the GOP base, I think the planets are aligned for an easy Obama win. In order to lose now, he'd basically have to "get caught with a live boy or a dead girl."



Er, uh, what? The country has been through much worse times. Eight years of Bush have definitely set us back, but I see no reason why things can't begin to turn around in the next four years. Reagan earned a second term based on the (in my opinion mistaken) belief that he rescued the country after the Carter years. Why can't Obama do the same in his first term?

But she's currently actively embroiled in a scandal about getting her former brother-in-law fired from his job. She's replaced the entire roster of a committee because it made a decision she didn't like. Those are just a couple of things I can point to off the top of my head. What about those is integritous integral integratularitous upright?

Announcing before the convention was supposed to steal attention from the Democrats.

Except it seems to have only given the media the time it needed, to dig into her background and generate their own talking points.

Which is taking air time away from what McCain's troops would have preferred.

$12 x 10^12 indebtedness for a start. That works out to be about $160,000 for a typical family of four. How will the government pay that off? Can you say inflation? In five years (or less) someone earning $60,000 a year will be saying "Would you like fries with that?", and that $60K won't buy any more than the $15K he is earning now.

The collapse of the housing market is just the first domino to fall. Whoever gets elected will end up taking the blame for the consequences of eight years of Bush malfeasance.

tanstaafl.

What makes you think that they have to? Yeah, the public debt is high right now, but as a percentage of GDP, it's less than it was when Eisenhower took office, and it was high then because of a financial recession and a war, too.

The public debt as an absolute number has seldom gone down in recent history. But the absolute number isn't that big a deal. The debt as expressed as a percentage of GDP is much more revealing.

And, actually, paying off the debt results in deflation, not inflation, due to removal of money from the economy. Either one can be bad, of course, but neither is as a matter of course.

Don't get me wrong, our economy isn't in a good state; but the sky isn't falling, either.

On the other hand, one thing in particular does worry me about the public debt, which is the amount of it owned by the Chinese coupled with the artificially low value of the yuan.

"Yuan fries with that?"
LOL

Sorry- incurable punster.

Ooh. Someone has a list of books that Palin, as mayor, had banned from the local library. And threatened to fire the librarian for noncompliance.

My favorite: the always controversial Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

Interesting list, I'd like to see detailed confirmation from a source other than "some blogger".

Just playing devil's advocate here. It certainly doesn't surprise me that a right-winger would ban books, and those books are definitely the ones that usually get banned.

You know, I wonder what these people think their kids, who have supposedly never heard any "filth" in their lives, are going to do when they get out into the real world and someone says "fuck" in front of them? Ask politely what it means?

Good call. The list seems to exactly match this list. In fact, some of the books on the list weren't even published when the banning was supposed to have occurred.

If you guys want to know what conservatives *really* think about the pick, behold, the power of the open microphone!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/212920.php

Nice sleuthing. I saw you called them out on it in the comment thread.

This pregnancy decision map relating to Palin's last delivery is hilarious.. and horrifying.

Q: What's the difference between Sarah Palin and a pit bull?

A: The pit bull stands some chance of finding Nagorno-Karabakh on a map!

I give value to this statement coming from a former Alaska resident.


Since Obama will get elected, there is no doubt, I'm sure he'll take this blame with charisma. At least the American people* will actually support their president as Rome burns.


*well, at least 51% of them, that is.

Do you have a time machine that has allowed you to actually visit the future or is this some sort of crystal ball devise? Perhaps this is a feature of the new iPhone?

Please let me know, I really would like to see into the future as well.

If I had any faith in the American populace, I would agree with you. However, daily tracking polls suggest that McCain is receiving a significant bounce from the GOP convention, and with a complacent, obsequious media and a base that seems incapable of noticing when they're being pandered to, he just may be able to pull this heist off.

As but one example of the lengths they are going to mislead the public, Sarah Palin has been holed up in Alaska this weekend, being prepped by McCain's campaign staff. She hasn't faced the media at all since she was chosen as McCain's running mate, and will not do so until the middle of this week, when she will sit down with ABC's Charlie Gibson for "multiple interviews." What this means in practice is that the McCain campaign can dictate the terms of the interviews, what kind of questions will be allowed, etc., and if the questions go off the script, the remaining sessions will be canceled.

This is a complete farce, and any media outlet with any dignity and self-respect would call the McCain campaign out for being afraid to talk to the American people without a script. Since there are no such media outlets, McCain gets to carefully craft the message, and the tough questions go unanswered (and unasked.)

This trend will continue until November, so the debates may be the only chance Democrats have to force the GOP to talk about the issues, and even that depends on having competent debate moderators. November 4th could arrive with the American public having no idea how dangerous McCain/Palin would be to the country.

In other words, the Democrats will *not* be able to sleepwalk through this election, no matter how awful a ticket McCain/Palin is. They will need historic turnout in the swing states. They will need to steal a couple of red states from '04. And, quite possibly, they will need an army of lawyers to fight election fraud. Landslides are hard to come by these days, and I don't expect one.

There are so many things that get reported in local news that people either don't know about or don't pay attention to because it doesn't directly affect them. Obama saying he was going to delay Constellation to pay for education, then when talking to Florida saying he was going to accelerate Constellation. McCain preaching straight talk and being against lobbying, then it was found out that several of his top aides were lobbyists for EADS (parent company of Airbus, who McCain actively helped win the Air Force tanker contract by getting the requirements rewritten).

The general population just doesn't care about how the candidates define themselves by their actions or promises. They are more concerned about whatever *gate thing comes out next (and that is the most ignorant fracking names given ever - I bet the dumbasses don't even realize why the Nixon scandal was called Watergate).

Politics and politicians piss me off.

I stayed there once. Great pillows, and you have a good view of the other rooms

I hear that there's problems with the doors not staying locked, though.