Palin sucked ass last night.

[Travis Henry]

I'm a decided voter in the sense that I won't be voting for Obama, though I probably won't vote for McCain either. I'm writing in my vote for Johnny Utah


I've been telling my wife over the last week that the election is essentially over and Obama is going to win. She gets pissed whenever I bring it up because she's not a fan of the Democrats or Obama. My reasoning is based on three factors: 1) Obama has the momentum right now and there's not enough time for McCain to overcome the national 5-6 point lead and the battleground states are looking terrible for him; 2) The financial crisis has shifted the focus on the economy to the point where social issues and foreign policy are being largely ignored- McCain may have been right about the surge but no one even cares- McCain looks like he's completely out of his depth on the economy and helluva lot of people care abou that; and 3) McCain's judgment has been called into question because he picked such a rube for his running mate.

Factors 2 and 3 obviously contribute to the first factor.

With that said, my wife is not appreciative of my prognostications (which aren't prognostications at all at this point- it's like predicting that Winter will be cold in Minnesota and Summer will be hot in Phoenix).

But when I flipped around the channels last night between the two college football games and the VP debate, my wife had to turn her head when Sarah Palin would start talking because my wife was so embarassed for her. I think I heard the following 20 times: "there's really only one man in this campaign who has brought about change, and his name is John McCain." It was always preceded with zero foundation and was always followed with no further elaboration. Several other phrases were also repeated numerous times, most involved some use of the word "maverick." These phrases equally lacked foundation and elaboration. I got the impression that she didn't what the hell she was talking about 90% of the time. And I was a guy who was initially impressed by her convention speech.

Sometimes you can get by with platitudes alone if the person delivering it has established some kind of credibility. But unfortunately this particular VP candidate answered a relatively easy question from Katie Couric in a totally nonsensical manner (discuss a Supreme Court case you agree with). You could dubb over the Miss Teen South Carolina video with Palin's answer and it wouldn't lose any of its ensuing hilarity. So, no, I don't think credibility has been established.

And she's a VP candidate, and McCain thought it was a good idea to have her as his running mate and a potential commander in chief should he die in office.