1. The West: For a Dem, Obama is unusually strong in the Mountain West, running close to or ahead of McCain in the Red states of Montana, Colorado, Alaska, Nevada and North Dakota. It's obvious that Palin complicates Alaska. But I wonder whether she'll have an impact in the rest of these races. With all that hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and moose eating, she's certainly the most culturally Western of 2008's four ticket-topping candidates, and it'll be interesting to see if she's able to counteract Obama's efforts to expand the map in this crucial region.
2. The Women: One of the most promising lines of attack against McCain--that he chose the "underqualified" Palin solely for the crass political purpose of expanding his share of the women's vote, thereby underscoring how "desperate" the "original maverick" has become--won't really work. Why? Because Palin is actually, you know, a woman. I suspect that most undecided voters will see it as a good thing that America now is poised to make history no matter who wins--regardless of what sort of political calculations went into the pick. Your average voter doesn't dig deep into strategy; they see the broad strokes, the pretty picture. Whether McCain actually wins over more women because of Palin is another story. That he expects Hillary Holdouts to vote for a green governor who disagrees with them on most of the issues after they raised hell about the prospect of Obama putting any woman but Clinton in the White House--even though, say, Kathleen Sebelius shared their stances on everything from abortion to equal pay--strains at the boundaries of reason. But who said any of this was reasonable? And I agree with Marc Ambinder that "undecided women, weakly partisan Democrats, independent suburban women, women between the ages of 30 and 50, will now take a hard second look at John McCain because of his choice of Sarah Palin." Not necessarily votes, just second looks. Such are identity politics.
3. The Counterargument: Reader K.S. of Denver presents the strongest possible case against Palin:
The selection criteria for a vice president, by both parties' definition, is the ability to immediately and effectively assume the responsibilities of the presidency. That's a critically important criteria given McCain's age and health. Can you imagine this self-described soccer mom negotiating with Putin or Maliki or whomever is in power in Iran or China or North Korea? Working with NATO? Serving as commander-in-chief in a time of war? Has she ever met with any of our allies? Has she ever visited a foreign country? Does she have any understanding of economics? Has she even walked down Wall Street? How does being a mayor of a town of 8,000 or so and then serving a 2-year-stint as head of the country's smallest-populated state qualify her for these tasks?
Going forward, the challenge for Democrats is following K.S.'s lead without a) seeming too eager to imply that McCain is on the verge of croaking, which older voters will find offensive or b) reminding swing voters that they're still sort of unsure whether Obama's three-year stint in the Senate and decade or so in Springfield qualify him for those tasks, either. As I wrote earlier, most folks think an underqualified president is worse than an underqualified vice-president, so it's not necessarily a topic that Chicago wants to dwell on. That said, the Biden-Palin debate is going to be must-see TV.
P.S. For a comprehensive Palin profile, I highly recommend the Almanac of American Politics.
