Mr Obama, for all his remarkable strengths, was beatable. The fact that he is not even further ahead in the polls underlines the point. Put his race to one side: in my view, the fact that he is black is as much an advantage as a disadvantage. But he is inexperienced and his voting record is firmly to the left. Independent voters have therefore had their doubts throughout and it is independent voters who decide elections. Mr McCain was the very man to appeal to these wavering centrists. Among Republicans he was uniquely qualified because of his reputation as a pragmatist and serial deviator from the party line. Yet he failed to exploit this advantage.
The choice of Sarah Palin as running mate was pivotal. Mr McCain's mistake was not his decision to choose a social conservative with no experience of national politics. He needed a running mate to energise his party's activists, who would otherwise have found the prospect of a McCain presidency uninspiring. And inexperience, in itself, is not a disqualification for high political office - if it were, Mr Obama would be ruled out, too. The first response to Ms Palin was everything Mr McCain could have wished. She appealed not only to the conservative base but to many independents as well. The instant contempt many Democrats expressed at her selection hurt them, not her, and the Republican ticket moved ahead in the polls for the first and only time in the race.
Against the odds, this was a position from which Mr McCain could have won. But two things had to happen for him to capitalise on this advantage. First, Ms Palin needed to withstand scrutiny. Second, Mr McCain, with the conservative base now in his pocket, needed to exploit the opportunity this gave him to move his campaign to the centre.
Neither of those things happened. You can read the rest of the article here.
The flaw in your otherwise cogent essay is that you act as though the qualities that made Palin an utter failure -- her willful ignorance on policy and general anti-knowledge bias, the sleazy amateurishness of her political machinations in Alaska, her polarizing positions and rhetoric -- were not there when McCain picked her. It was clear not just to liberals but to anyone who looked at the facts that she could not but be an abject failure, just as it was clear to many in 2000 that George W. Bush was not capable of being president. The difference is that last time it took about six years of ludicrous incompetence for the bulk of Americans to wise up, whereas this time it only took a few weeks. Her fall from her post-convention-speech zenith (a speech that reflects nothing of her abilities besides her acting ability; remember, it was written before she was even picked) was inevitable. McCain was one of few Republicans of national stature who could have appealed to those of us who live in the "reality-based community," but his choice for his vice-presidential candidate was the seed for his content-free campaign.
Sarah Palin's time has already gone. Americans do not like this woman. She is no George Bush. Bush was not very intelligent but he became president. He became president because he learned politics the old fashioned way, by memorization, the way we used to learn poems in school. Most importantly Bush had a father who already had an election machine set up. So the combination of this machine, the evangelical Christian right, the way Clinton polarized this country, and short sound bites, Bush with his west Texas accent talked his wannabe cowboy way into the White House. Palin is no George Bush; she is a product of racist Idaho via Alaska, union wages made by her lower middle class culture made good 6 colleges but ---- mostly by socialistic union programs in the state of Alaska.
First, being black in the United States has never been an "advantage," except in enhancing the chances of being picked for the attention of a lynch mob. Second, McCain's choice of Palin eliminated any possibility of his making an appeal to the center; had he wished to make such an appeal, he needed to pick a less extreme (and, frankly, more intelligent) vice presidential candidate.
I'm interested in the basis for the contention that Obama is inexperienced. Obama has 8 years in state elective office, 4 years in federal elective office, not to mention 11 years teaching constitutional law and other years in "public life" as the evidently now despised community organizer. LBJ and Gerald Ford spent more than 20 years in the Senate or House, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Taft, Hoover, and Eisenhower never held any elective office before president. Wilson, FDR, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and GW Bush never held any federal elective office before president. And Taft, Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, and GW Bush all spent fewer years in any elective office than Obama. Obviously, holding elective office, and specifically holding federal elective office, is not the only kind of experience one can have, and I'm not suggesting that any of the presidents (other than perhaps GWB) lacked the necessary experience to be president. If the argument is that Obama is inexperienced relative to McCain, OK, but if the argument is that Obama is inexperienced relative to other presidents, the basis for it is not obvious to me. Which is why I am asking.
I whole-heartedly agree that McCain blew it by not staying in the middle, which I had believed was his whole selling point. I'm not sure what it was that scared him away from being himself or how someone as fundamentalist as Palin ended up on the ticket, but it was an example of an old man giving in. Perhpas he wanted to be the President so badly that he let fear take over and he let people talk him into things that only 10 months ago seemed outright impossible. Falling back to mud-slinging, he shot the moderates and centrists and independents like me in the foot, and we've hopping over to the guy who has actually done quite well in the center: B. Obama. Oh well. Lesson learned?
It seems to me that much of the problem with Palin is not just that she is viewed as unready and incapable by most people outside of the GOP base, but that the reasons the religious right love her are many of the reasons that independents were not likely to accept her. McCain was not going to lose the GOP base to Obama, and many seem scared enough of an Obama presidency to vote for McCain no matter what. The people who would have actually considered not voting for McCain on principle are also the ones most likely to be terrified of Obama (James Dobson comes to mind...). So it seems like the best idea to win the centrist vote would have been to pick someone like Tom Ridge or maybe even Romney who would have been able to speak the those in the center, not picking another neocon.
American liberals are basically pessimistic about their popularity and fearful of the conservative masses. Sometimes this leads to silliness as in the fearful response to Palin (that helped her) but it mostly means that liberals have accepted the need to track to the centre. American conservatives however believe their own rhetoric about how they incarnate the true spririt of America.
You are assuming Diebold won't steal the election for Bush/McCain.