Saturday, August 30, 2008

Palin Who?

Who cares, seems to be the answer. She's a women and in the increasingly cynical campaign of McCain that seems to be enough. Ms. Palin made her choice clear with this statement:

“Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all,” Ms. Palin said to huge applause."

This is simply an attempt to sweep up disaffected Hillary supporters without any concern for the fact the two women have very little in common. Palin is pro-life, anti-choice, socially conservative, doesn't believe global warming is caused by human activity, has little foreign policy or even governing experience, pro Oil companies and, maybe, ethically questionable. She supported Pat Buchanon for president in 2000; meaning anti-immigrant and pro-isolationism. She thinks creationism should be taught in schools and should embolden christian conservatives back to the fold after McCain gave them pause (for good reason: he isn't really one of them). And McCain has only met her twice.

This is political cynicism at it's worst. Pick a VP simply to try to swipe some votes, forgoing a very real concern that McCain might not last four years if elected president. To those who don't know, the last man to run for president at McCain's age would have died in office (Paul Tsongas). Obama just got a bounce from the historic democratic primary. The question is whether this rather absurd choice will cut into that lead or not. My real fear in looking at recent state-by-state polls is that the swing states are so close we may see electronic voting problems and other efforts to undermine the will of the American people. Hopefully, people will see through this lame attempt at appeasement and vote for the only candidate that can actually make their lives better.

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