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

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

I really really hope you're wrong. Because having girl bits is no more relevant to the ability to govern than having white skin, or white hairs.

[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.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I have more faith in Hillary's ability to woo her supporters to Barack's side than you do. Her point to them - "is it about me, or is it about the issues I am working for?" is very pointed, pardon my redundance. Any woman who votes for McCain because he has a woman VP candidate - indeed, any person who votes for him - based simply on the configuration of his VP candidate's wabbly bits has no business voting.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, being stupid or bigoted doesn't remove the right to vote. People can and do vote based on the most trivial of reasons (I've actually heard someone say that they voted for a person solely because he had the same name as their grandfather!). Certainly colour and racial background are going to be big matters for a number of people, even though they are irrelevant to how well he can do the job. I don't see any way round it, it's neither practical nor desirable to have a question on every vote about the reasons the voter cast it that way.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Sure, this will bring a few Vagina-Americans (TM by Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast) out to vote for McSame.

However, Hillary made it clear, and will, I expect, continue to make clear through the next few months, that anyone who was for her needs to be for Obama, and that McLame is a complete zero on women's issues.

More, this selection negates some of the Republican attacks -- how can they say Obama's experience or lack of it is a campaign issue when their candidate has less? -- and opens them up to a few of their own (did you know this chick managed to wreck the economy of the town she was mayor of, before her ascent to the governor's office? And of course you're aware that she is involved in an ethics investigation, after running on an ethics platform).

Given that the astroturfing PUMAs are the only remaining serious voices complaining about Hillary, I doubt your prediction is on target. If it had been Kay Bailey Hutchinson, I'd be scared. It isn't, and I hope to see Biden treating her with contempt in their debates, attacking McLame instead.

[adamselzer.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of those women still think they're voting for McCain 1.0 , who had a fairly reasonably stance on abortion. This is the new McCain - overturning Roe is explicitly part of his platform. It's right on his webpage.

This is a hail mary pass - it might just work, but, more likely, it'll be swatted down.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Good point. Most people (including yours truly, a Canuck) are not aware of that right-turn move.

However, I've doubted his ability to govern ever since the moment he was quoted as saying "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." His voting record in the U.S. Congress is another sore point (which Obama raised in his acceptance speech).

Surely you Yankees can do better than a "frozen Freedom fry!"

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one to predict this on my f-list; another friend (who has dual Canadian-American citizenship) also stated he suspected this would happen back in June.

Surely you Yanks can do better than four more years of inanity, no?!

[Note to foregoing: "McCain's" is a popular frozen french fry in Canada and parts of the US.]

[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.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

What is "PUMA"? I have seen other people using it and I'm having a hard time figuring out what it stands for.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, McCain has *never* supported reproductive rights--did he have some reasonable incarnation I hadn't heard of?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I think you're mistaken; I don't think female former Hillary supporters are that shallow. They/we are quite capable of recognizing an anti-woman person even if that person happens to be female. It's guys who get confused about that.

[adamselzer.livejournal.com]

McCain 1.0 was thought to be reasonable about when. When asked what he'd do if his daughter wanted an abortion, he said he'd be against it, but it would be her decision in the end - a position that drew a lot of fire from the right. He may not have been FOR reproductive rights, but he sort of acted like he wouldn't overturn them.

THis is NOT McCain 1.0.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

it's neither practical nor desirable to have a question on every vote about the reasons the voter cast it that way.

I'm glad we disagree on that point. What you've just outlined is my entire life's work at this point - researching the reasons people vote and do what they do in regards to the law.

But in any case, I'm about ready to say that we should require passing a critical-thinking test before being allowed in the voting booth, because I'm tired of stupid people electing other stupid people and thus allowing our country to be run into the ground. The original intent of the Founders was an educated populace making informed decisions; what we have now is certainly no relation to that intention.

Voting is a responsibility as well as a right. Too often people only exercise the latter without exercising the former, which makes their vote a joke.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Well, officially it means "People United Means Action" but that's retcon, it originated as "Party Unity, My Ass!" It's a pro-Clinton fundraising PAC.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

I predicted the same in earlier posts (like May or June 2008), and I sadly have to agree with you, but for different reasons:

Despite Obama's speechifying abilities, he really has no original content to his message, just stuff other Democrats had been saying for years. Plus he's still trying to prove he was right in the first place for not voting to send troops to Iraq. In the end, Obama still won't be able to close the deal with the electorate on any stance other than NOT being another Fascist--uh, I mean Republican.

After Hillary's speech at the DNC, Charlie Gibson quoted a Republican observer with, "What a mistake it was not to have chosen Hillary Clinton." With this I profoundly agree. I still want to join a Hillary write-in movement, if there is any.

[howeird]

I agree, and I'll raise you one. Palin has showed that unlike Bush, she doesn't legislate her personal religious beliefs onto her constituents. Even though Alaska's citizens passed a same-sex marriage ban she vetoed a bill that sought to block the state from giving public employee benefits such as health insurance to same-sex couples. http://dwb.adn.com/news/government/legislature/story/8525563p-8419318c.html

Yes, she did it because her Atty General said the bill was unconstitutional, but Bush would have signed it anyway, and fought for it in court.

She also prosecuted GOP party leaders who were corrupt, instead of giving them medals like Bush has.

There's a lot to Palin which would attract the Hilary supporters, especially bearing in mind that other than the gender issue, those were the more conservative of the Democratic voters. Heck, I know a couple of Republicans who voted for Hilary in the primaries.

[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.

[howeird]

Surely you Yanks can do better than four more years of inanity, no?!
I see you don't remember 2004

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Let me clarify. "It is neither practical nor desirable to have a question on every vote about the reasons the voter cast it that way and use it to invalidate the votes. Sure, you can have a question on there (as long as you don't mind that I will sit there for a couple of hours writing an essay about why I voted that way) but are you going to make the analyses in time to get a meaningful vote count? You already spend close to half a term thinking and campaigning for the next one, how much longer are you going to spend?

An educated populace can just as easily be wrong or biased. It depends who does the education. At the risk of invoking Godwin, most of the leaders in a certain party in a European country in the 1930s were well educated, and very well educated about political realities. Most members of the Communist Party in the USSR were well educated. Pity the peasants who only knew that the leaders were 'wrong'.

Who chooses? Who makes the tests to tell if the voters are educated enough? Not very long ago black people were forbidden the vote because they were considered 'uneducated' and many people regarded them as uneducatable. Not very long ago women were denied the vote because they were considered "not intelligent enough" to vote. What other groups are going to be marginalised because they aren't "good enough" to vote? Dyslexics because they can't spell? People whose first language isn't that of the vote?

"Voting is a responsibility as well as a right. Too often people only exercise the latter without exercising the former, which makes their vote a joke." True, and they treat lots of other things as 'rights' without accepting the responsibilities as well. They have children and don't take care of them or bring them up as responsible citizens. They demand their right of "free speech" and then abuse it to hurt others. They demand their right to drive and then get lawyers to buy them off the hook when they crash. Have driving tests with a written component reduced the number of deaths? Not in the UK from what I can gather.

Yes, 'stupid' people elect 'stupid' leaders. Unfortunately what people consider 'stupid' is never what they themselves do, only what others do. I remember being asked after a university election "did you vote the right way?" Yes, of course I did, because the way I voted was what I considered right by definition. I didn't vote the way the questioner meant, but since he was a 200lb linebacker type I wasn't going to correct his question for him.

If half your population is actually stupid or corrupt enough to elect someone who is stupid in the clinical sense, you've got a big problem and restricting the vote won't be enough to cure it. Especially since the ones doing the restricting are very likely to be the ones in power...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

In the UK as well, "McCain's Oven Chips" (what y'all call 'fries' we call 'chips'; what y'all call 'chips' we call 'crisps'; two nations separated by a common language). They are cooked in the oven (broiler?) instead of being fried.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

To complete the comment, a "pro-Clinton" PAC founded by Republicans with the stated intent of driving a wedge into the Democratic party.

Yeah, she's got a vagina, but so does Ann Coulter (supposedly)

[cosmiquemuffin.livejournal.com]

As for the going after corruption, she's got her own ethics problems.

As for women's issues in general, we should probably sink a lot of money into getting the following ad into serious rotation:

[r-wolfcastle.livejournal.com]

1) Hillary got 18 million primary votes.

2) Obama is already set up to lose (barely) because of the uneven distribution of blue voters when compared with the distribution of red voters. He'll carry states like New York and California by large margins, but those extra votes won't win him any extra electoral votes, and the combination of all the smaller states' electoral votes will defeat him.

It doesn't take too large of a percentage of those 18 million votes to sway things in McCain's favor. And they don't even have to vote for McCain -- they are organizing campaigns to write in Hillary's name, or they could just stay home and not vote. The Hillary supporters who feel they have been scorned and are hell-bent on punishing the Democratic party no matter what the cost to the nation, and even in direct defiance of their preferred candidate's explicit wishes, may or may not be a large group, but they are certainly vocal and deeply deeply bitter and angry.

I do not think this bodes well.

While I fear just this scenario

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I won't consider it over until it is over. I had a suspicion during the primaries that it was largely Republicans pushing the "Hilary is inevitable" line because they saw her as easy to beat. It's true that some people think so little that they will vote for the woman because she is a woman (any woman) but I'm hoping there are at least as many stupid Republicans who no way will vote for a woman even as #2, or bought into McCain==Mavarick fiction and don't like it.