the citizen-viewer

You are a pie-eyed optimist.

With the possible exception of Kennedy/Johnson, no VP choice has decided the election in living memory.

Palin's problems may make her selection a wash and not an asset, but it will not decide the election.

Unless Toopergate gets some real traction prior to November, it won't hurt McCain.

Show me a presidential or VP candidate who hasn't supported pork and I will call you a liar.

And the public doesn't know anything about the Alaskan Independence Party and cares less. Unless you can show they were planning an armed uprising and she claims her training for that qualifies as military leadership experience it is not going to be important.

Bush's opponents kept dismissing him as an idiot and we ended up with 8 years of him. If you write-off the McCain candidacy as finished we could end up with 4-8 years of him.

As a great philosopher once said, "It ain't over 'til it’s over."

Good points all John, but I'll try and defend myself nonetheless.

Here's what Palin has done: change the subject. The Repubs were getting to even with Obama by running him down, and now their whole storyline of anti-Obamism has been put on hiatus while McCain does an about face and attacks the media for covering Palin (Obama showed his skills by disavowing the pregnancy attack ASAP). The polls have a big spread and we've got at least the rest of the week before Palin settles into obscurity. In a race where the GOP has to never stop stabbing to win, taking a holiday is fatal.

Keeping the cuts coming was the idea behind picking Palin. Her nomination stomped on the post-convention coverage and for 24 hours it helped reinforce the idea that Obama was just media show. Palin turned out to too good, however, as she has made the race about McCain and that's a loser.

Worse Palin has loads of negatives that will only get buried as long as she stays buried. That is, if she goes on the attack or shows up for interviews, she gets asked about this stuff and it's back to square one. If she gets whisked off to Siberia, make that Alaska, then McCain's back to his old tricks minus a key implicit claim to his campaign, he's got wisdom. "Oh yeah, where's the vp?"

I get our pount that in a Republican-friendly media world most of Palin's screw ups may never get covered or will get her favorable press, but there's a limit to how much the right's institutional sand traps (media, money, courts and cops) can help them. As Rove said in 2006, those things only work in close elections.

McCain has to keep this close. He has to keep Obama looking vulnerable, not inevitable. Once Obama looks like he really is the likely winner, McCain looks diminished, like he does right now.

I think Palin has opened enough daylight for Obama to claim the majority and never give it up.

All that said, my near and dear ones often get on me for the very same reason you raise--assuming we gonna win this time because they are so nuts. Truth be told I've got a horrible track record with that kind of thing as my Gore in 04 and Kerry/Edwards 08 memorabilia can attest.

Still, sometimes the other guys f--- it up big time, and they really aren't indestructible geniuses. Social Security, Katrina, Mark Foley, to name three. This is another one.

The biggest hit that Palin causes is on McCain's vetting and/or judgment. She has issues, but her biggest is her lack of experience.

One problem with choosing such an “outsider” is that they haven’t been exposed to the media pressure that a major politician has. For the last year or more every media outlet has looked at Obama and McCain and the chance that something big and ugly showing up now is unlikely. Likewise Biden has had years of scrutiny – as have rumored Republican VP nominees such as Ridge and Lieberman. Good or bad, the other three ticket leaders have been scrutinized and you know roughly what their history is and their family’s history as well.

If McCain had chosen a Republican with more big league experience that would have reinforced the charge that Obama is too inexperienced to be President. And that is the strongest attack they can make against him because it has some truth to it. (In the interest of full disclosure, I support Obama mainly because he is not McCain, aka Bush 2.0. And I would not support McCain regardless of his running mate.)

And while it is smart politically to disavow attacks on Palin’s daughter, it also the right thing to do. She is not running for anything and there are distinct limits as to how much a parent can be held responsible for their children’s actions. (I am not referring to the parents being legally open to civil suits for the actions of minor children.)

It is true that Obama has opened an 8 point lead, but if Obama and company don’t step up their game they may not hold it. So far they have had few effective ads.

There is a lot to attack McCain on, especially since he has run towards Bush and his positions since he wrapped up the nomination. Bush has the lowest approval rating of any president since modern polling started; tie Bush and McCain together in the publics mind.

As a minor point I would love for Obama to hammer away at McCain’s not knowing how many houses he and his wife own. That shows either he has memory problems or that McCain really doesn’t “feel” the common man’s pain because he has such extensive holdings he can’t keep track of them. To be honest, no one running for president, at least on a major party ticket, leads a life like the common person and I am not sure it is all that important. However, Obama’s supposedly being out of touch with the “real” people is the basis for McCain’s major anti-Obama ads so far, so anything that shows the claim to be worthless is good.

The Republican political operatives are not geniuses, but many of them are very good at what they do. Writing them off as certain to lose is much too dangerous to do. Assume they are geniuses and work that much harder to defeat them.

Absolutely. Work hard no matter what they do.

I saw a new (or at least new to me) Obama ad.

It was based on the old song "I don't know much..." with new lyrics. Besides being fun it, ties McCain to Bush (it ends with McCain embracing Bush) and raises questions about McCain's abilities.

I liked it. I hope undecideds find it as effective as I did.