I'm about to stick my neck out...

[figmo]

...and make a prediction re: the Presidential election.

I have been saying for months that if McCain were to select a female VP candidate, he'd win the election.

I stand by that statement.

This has nothing to do with anyone's political preferences, including mine. I am making this prediction as a journalist.

My logic: Barack Obama's VP, Joe Biden, is male, thus alienating the folks who voted for Hillary Clinton because they wanted a woman President. Many of Hillary Clinton's supporters felt alienated by Obama's choice.

Many of these Hillary Clinton supporters are so desperate to see the "glass ceiling" shattered they'd vote for anything female on a ticket, no matter what her viewpoints were. Now that they have their female on a ticket, many of these former Clinton supporters will vote for the Republican slate, mostly to have a woman only "a heartbeat away" from the oldest Presidential candidate ever, exclusively because of her gender even though Sarah Palin's viewpoints are very different from Hillary Clinton's.

Comments

[notwavedrowning.livejournal.com]

I suspect it may go the other way. Earlier on my friend had said that it looked like Ms Clinton would be elected and I told him that I did not think the religious right would accept a female head of state. A strong, intelligent woman is still too much of a threat to those people. Given his age, he needs somebody who has to be a known player and I don't think this person is. It's a no win situation. If he put a strong woman in there with a backbone it would scare off the far right, yet if he's trying to woo the Democratic vote that's what he has to do. I would like to think people vote for the best person, not just somebody who looks like them.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I agree; she is apparently virulently anti-choice, which may be a relief to the right wing.

Mind you, I hope you're right; I just am not as confident as you are.

[howeird]

She is pro-choice, if you consider she chose to bear a child whom she knew would be born with Down's Syndrome. Obama is also personally against abortion, and in his acceptance speech he ducked the issue by suggesting the answer is to work for fewer teen pregnancies.

[danceswithlife]

Actually...fewer unwanted pregnancies.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

i did not read that as ducking the issue. i read that as him listing a waya to find middle ground ona long list of issues that have been used to divide this country in recent elections. as a way of looking for solutions that everyone could live with on many topics, so that we could restore a civil tone to political discussions on large and small scales.

so that maybe we could once again talk to our neighbors and co workers without one or both of uis slamming our minds shut on everything because we disagree on one hotly debated issue.

[howeird]

I saw it as doing both.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

obama had a tall order of giving an inspiring speech while answering all the attack ads launched against him, laying out details of how he would accomplish each thing he wants to do, healing the rift with the hillary supporters, and telling people who he was and what he stood for.
i think he accomplished a remarkable number of things in one speech, without losing the crowd at any point.
if you listen to his speech from 4 years ago and his speech from this past week, he never contradicts himself.
we have a bunch of presidential debates coming up at which point we will know what his exact position is on anything that hasn't already been made clear. if he ducks the question at that point, then we'll know he really is ducking the question.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Finding a middle ground is the cornerstone of Obama's candidacy. It's refreshing after such long and protracted polarization.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

"Pro-choice" means making the option to abort legally available. Palin is outspokenly against that option, and therefore is not "pro-choice".

There are many people (like Obama) who hold that whatever they choose for themselves, they are not the keepers of other adults' consciences. That is the "pro-choice" -- or, in its true terminology, "pro-freedom" -- position.

[howeird]

I was being facetious, and literal. :-)

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Sorry -- I have a hard time distinguishing serious from sarcas, (and other nonserious tones) in print, without explicit help (e.g., "</facetious>").

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I accept that you were trying to be funny. However you were muddying the waters. It is not helpful. It does not contribute to a clear understanding either of Palin or of the abortion issue.

I accept that it was unintentional, but please don't do it again.

[howeird]

Yes Mommy.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

i don't consider pro-choice to be "as long as you make the same choices i do."

i have never been pregnant- thanks to the fact that condoms have been legal and available in my lifetime, and i had sex education so i knew that you could get pregnant even if it was"just your first time" or the guy promised to "pull out."

when you refuse to allow sex ed to be taught, and try to make birth control (and i mean pills, not abortion) illegal, you are taking away people's choices.

i hope i would never have an abortion. i always hoped that i would choose to bear the child and give it away, if i did not want it. but making it illegal to abort- i'm just not sure i can make the decision for every woman out there who are in circumstances i don't know or understand. we're talking about *overturning* a decision that was fought over long and hard, and given much debate, decades ago.

and while it is a valid topic of discussion, it is being used as a distraction from the fact that our jobs are being shipped overseas, our country has lost over 4000 soldiers in this pointless war, and our education adn health care systems are in a complete shambles.

how can you truly be pro-life if you don't allow your citizens to get their basic needs met once they are out of the womb? how can you be pro-life if you are willing to send them to a war that *we* started, while you threaten iran with starting another war, and then when the soldiers come home, you deny them health care and benefits? shame shame shame on us.

the abortion issue is not our biggest issue right now.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Um. Assuming you are genuinely confused...

The term "pro-choice" actually means something in American politics--it means "supporting *other* women's choice to have a baby or not, *either* way."

Palin is emphatically not pro-choice.