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RCdc -> RE: Rumors suggest McCain has picked his running mate (8/29/2008 2:59:53 PM)
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This is Darcy
I've skimmed over the thread, and as an 'outsider' based in the UK, the last 12 hours have provoked a few observations.....
> While I'm sure Sarah Palin is extrememly competent at what she does, it seems such a 'demographic' choice. You've got McCain, who's old, and essentially an extension of Mr Bush Jr, so what better than to cover all the other bases? Woman? Check. Mother? Check? Son serving his country? Check. Difficult personal circumstances in the form of a downs child? Check. Pretty but not vacuously cute? Check. Hunts? Check. (Though she does hunt moose, which Bill Bryson accurately described a cows drawn by three year olds, and akin to shooting fish in a barrel). Good call, Mr McCain. Secure the female vote on the back of Hilary's nosedive. Go for the anti-abortion vote in the same way that Bush did in 2004. (Though it always makes me smile that people are anti-abortion and pro-gun. We won't let you kill your child in the womb, but if he steps on my property when he's a teenager we'll blow his fucking head off.)
>On the other hand, Obama seems to have shot himself squarely in the foot with his comments. Slamming McCain for putting, as he puts it "the former mayor of a town of 9,000 people....a heartbeat away from the presidency", did he not realise that many of the people who he needs to vote for him are from small towns, such as he has again slammed as he did in April when he accused them of clinging to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations". Mr Obama doesn't, on the face of it, appear to be stupid, but with comments like this......
> On the other hand again, Obama's party is hilarious in slamming Palin for her lack of experience when their entire campaign for the last eighteen months has been centered around maintaining that Obama's lack of experience was not a problem. Equally, though, the fact that Dubya became President of the USofA without ever having left its shores, and thus had, perhaps, not really been aware of anything going on beyond Daddy's back yard apart from the output of the various whisky distilleries around the world , didn't harm the way the world has turned out, did it? Oh. Hang on.......
It's going to be interesting watching from across the pond as you choose your next President. One way or another history is going to be made. Obama will either become the first black President (not that it should make any difference what the colour of his skin is, the real question is can he do the job), or we'll sooner or later have the first female president (ditto my previous remarks but substitute gender for colour) because with McCain's health problems, he's a cert for anybody's dead pool, especially given his temper and the possibility of him losing it when Iran or Russia begin to call him on America's growing impotence as a world power with the rise of China.
(In an aside,I'm also finding it amusing that suddenly every Republican interviewed on television seems to be intimately familiar with who Sarah Palin is, when in reality, and be honest, how many of you even knew who the fuck she was 24 hours ago? I certainly didn't and I've been taking more interest in this election that many of my fellow countrymen.)
Either way, times they are a changing and it's going to interesting seeing who you end up with.
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