It is the Dems who would look bad if Clinton dissed Palin today, after Palin thanked her.  And Ferraro.  And hailed the anniversary this week of the 19th Amendment, Women's Equality Day.

Compare that to the Dems calling Clinton and Ferraro racists.  

Compare the GOP noting the anniversary, which was supposed to be feted by the Dems on the day, but they did not.  They decided to have Mark Warner as the keynote speaker instead of Clinton.  

Obama wins.  Runs for re-election, perhaps against Palin in 2012.

Obama loses.  McCain runs against Hillary in 2012.  Hillary wins, runs against Palin in 2016.

Obama wins.  Loses re-election to Palin in 2012, she runs against Hillary in 2016.

Mark Armbinder says a lot of the Republican strategists are worried.

They expect her to have a good week... and then to crash and burn when she hits the campaign trail as scrutiny catches up with her.  Some of these strategists are close to those Republicans who were vetted but not picked, but many of them aren't.   "It's like playing poker blind," one strategist said. Another e-mailed: "Obama's lack of readiness was THE only way to win."  When these Republicans ask the McCain campaign for guidance, all they hear back is: "She's more experienced than Obama is."

I think they are right to be worried.  She already has an endorsement to disown on top of the other stuff that has been discussed.  Also she and John need to talk about global warming.

Sarah Palin is not running for president, so to attack her as if she is, is not a great use of the time we have left.

I do think you can go after McCain on the basis that he has picked someone whose positions are proof positive that McCain is not looking to turn away from the conservative positions we have been seeing for the last eight years.

Palin's record in Alaska as a fiscal conservative, with a sky-high approval rating, and the argument that she will help McCain bring the same kind of approach to the national scene, is going to be hard to counter.

Camp Obama responded to Palin as if her nomination was an attack -- very bad approach.  (and is one more data point in the "Obama campaign is improvising, and in reactive mode" theory.  A smart campaign, when it doesn't know how to react, doesn't react until it knows what to say.)

I agree with BTD that this is all that needs to be said.

Pity the rest of her party and most of its supporters can't figure it out.

I'm still laughing at the volumes of "OMG, IT'S UP TO HILLARY TO SMACK HER DOWN!" comments I'm seeing. I'll say it again -- she's not on the ticket, remember?

I particularly like the HuffPo headline:

Sarah Palin, You're No Hillary Clinton.

Get over ouselves is more like it.

Palin is ONLY there in the hypercynical belief she will attract enough disgruntled Hillary supporters to make a difference.  And it logically follows, they would've nominated her even IF Hillary were the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the hopes they didn't LOSE Republican and fence-sitting women to her.

"I haven't met her before. She seems like a compelling person ... with a terrific personal story. I'm sure that she will help make the case for Republicans, unfortunately the case is more of the same, and so ultimately John McCain is at the top of the ticket. But the fact that she ... will soon be nominated ... is one more indicator of this country moving forward ... one more hit against that glass ceiling. I congratulate her and look forward to a vigorous debate."

Regardless of what you all feel personally about Obama and/or Biden, the choice we make at the polls this November will have profound and lasting impacts on us, our kids, grandkids, nieces/nephews, etc.

If we lackadaisically allow McCain/Palin to be elected:

1.  Goodbye Roe v. Wade, hello back-alley coathanger abortions.  Yes, it really is that bad.

2.  Permanent enshrinement of the police surveillance state.

3.  A dramatic increase in bellicose, dangerous non-diplomacy, likely resulting in military confrontations with Iran and possibly even Russia.

4.  The end of any hope of actually attempting to combat the global climate crisis.

5.  A dramatic escalation in the erosion of the boundary separating church and state (take a gander at Palin's bio if you don't believe me).

6.  Losing my train of thought, as it's Friday afternoon.

That she managed to steer a bipartisan effort to get the natural gas pipeline (which will quintuple the amount of natural gas available to Midwestern markets) through the Alaska legislature after it had languished for 30 years?

That the ethics "scandal" involves her former brother-in-law, a state trooper who tasered his stepson with a state issued training taser (this charge was substantiated by his commanding officer).  

That she has the highest approval rating of any governor in the United States?

That she deals with foreign nations--especially Canada and Russia--on a daily basis.  Alaska is also a major import conduit for goods arriving from Asia.

Please keep an open mind about this remarkable woman--at a minimum, you should not underestimate her or her experience.

See this quote

http://thepage.time.com/2008/08/29/palin-i-put-down-the-blackberries-and-pick-up-the-breast-pump/

Talk about the straight talk express...

Now tell me, what working mother in America isn't going to relate to this woman? If you aren't already on the Obama bandwagon, or if you don't have especially strong feelings about specific policy issues (most Americans don't), whether you supported Hillary or not, you aren't going to care. You are going to vote for the candidate you relate to.

HOLD UP! That is not my argument, but an argument a colleague of mine (a female and huge Obama supporter) made at work today.

I almost wanted to smack her, but I do not believe in any violence, against a man or woman. I just gulped and said, "Oh, sorry, my phone's vibrating. Phone call" and walked away.

Ok.  So now that Obama's new-ness and "new kind of politics" image has worn off, and now that he has lost media attention.. now what?

Time to pull out that thick resume filled with experience, policy negoations, foreign policy experience, long list of sponsorship of bills in the senate... oh wait...

Hillary Clinton is one of many qualified men and women in both parties who could reasonably be expected to handle the complex, nuanced, and demanding duties of the presidency.  She didn't win (though she came far, far closer than any other woman in America's history) this time around, but she faced an equally, if not more, formidable campaigner in Barack Obama, who out-organized her, out-strategized her, out-fundraised her, and, in the end appealed to enough more people than she did to win the nomination.

Coming in second is nothing to be ashamed about, and whining and blaming Obama, the media, male misogyny and the evil conspiracy against women is not only counter-productive (creating the very victimized whiner stereotype that women-hating men have long believed in), but demeans the party, the values, and the vision that she has given her life to.  

In addition, should her supporters, in an irrational fit of pique, hand this country back to the Republicans to finish their demolition of democracy, it will create in the minds not just of many male voters, but of may female voters as well, that we can't risk having our party disenfranchised by another male/female war in the foreseeable future.  Hillary understood this when she (if a bit late) graciously conceded the race and threw her support to Barack.  Now we will find out if the rest of her supporters have developed the political maturity to do the same.

In America it is NOT about the cult of personality - that, as we have seen with Reagan and Dubya is a dangerous perversion of the Peoples' Sovereignty.  No person is entitled to represent us (note I did NOT say lead us).  We are entitled to select the people who most closely represent our own views, ideals, and needs, to enact them for us.

In America, the People are Sovereign, not our "leaders".  Those who serve in politics are nothing more than our virtual voices, acting in our names, for our goals.  It is far more important to have representatives who come as close as possible to representing us, than it is to have any single "catagory" of person there, be it male, female, gay, straight, black, white, asian, christian, jewish, atheist, tall, short, fat or thin.  It is MY voice that I want them to speak with, not their own.  Bush never understood that HE is not the decider, WE THE PEOPLE are.

Hillary would have been a reasonable choice as far as my views, ideals, and needs are, if a bit too wedded to some political ideas and traditions I think we are better off outgrowing.

Barack is also a reasonable choice as far as my views, ideals, and needs are, though, he, too, falls somewhat short of the progressive/left vision I have for a better American society.  

John McCain and Sarah Palin's values and ideology, on the other hand, represent everything that I am against, everything that I believe has been destroying the People's Sovereignty, corrupting our government and way of life, and turning our country away from unity and humanity, and into hateful armed camps who would rather do injury to their political enemies at home than our real enemies abroad (and rather do injury to the political enemies in their own party than the real danger across the aisle).

I think that my voice will be reasonably well represented by Obama (or Hillary, Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, Gore, or Kennedy, for that matter) in the Oval Office.  

And that will be more than I had hoped to see over the past 40 years.

Let's get over this penis vs vagina war and the black vs white war and the young vs old war, and the working-class vs the "elite" war and get down to making this the kind of country where Male-Americans, Female-Americans, African-Americans, Christian-Americans, Gay-Americans, Straight-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Atheist-Americans, Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, Rich-Americans, Poor-Americans and all the other hyphenated Americans can simply be Americans - without all the divisive qualifications and labels.

To borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King,

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, or the homes of their ancestors, or their gender, or their religion or lack thereof, but by the content of their character."

He can only just keep hitting McCain and hoping to get enough voters to back him to win.

Voters that are going to go to McCain because of Palin are basically totally out of the game now.

In a gubernatorial debate, Palin stated emphatically that her opposition to abortion was so great, so total, that even if her teenage daughter was impregnated by a rapist, she would "choose life" -- meaning apparently that she would not permit her daughter to have an abortion.

Same age, same lack of experience, same newness and novelty.

I doubt that she has all the bad friends Obama has though.

She may have ideas I disagree with but McCain-Palin will not be able to pass any legislation or judges that the Dems do not agree with because of the new Democratic majority in the House and Senate.

So, she fits my plan just fine. McCain-Palin 2008 and Hillary-Anybody 2012.

But if you must, attack her crazy right wing positions, not her experience, or lack thereof.

Isn't this a refreshing flip-flop for this site!

Hmmmmm...don't I remember somewhere back in the dim fog of the primaries, an incessant drumbeat from not only Hillary Clinton and her campaign surrogates, but from her supporters - many on this site - that Obama wasn't as qualified to be president as Hillary because he didn't have the experience Hillary claimed?

Of course, now that McCain, whose experience dwarfs both Obama's and Hillary's (though falls somewhat short of Biden's) is partnering with somebody whose entire experience (outside of her beauty contest and sports reporting days) comes from a couple of local positions in a town of about 5,000 when she was in office there, and a mere 20 months as the governor of Alaska, a post she won with less than 50% of the votes - due primarily to the incumbent governor, Frank Murkowski's scandals - all of a sudden, experience is the one word nobody seems concerned about.