I SEE THAT SARAH PALIN HAS PICKED A RUNNING MATE

Ignore the line of attack in this new GOP ad. Just watch it. Um, who's at the top of the Republican ticket again?



I keep saying that Obama needs to go after Palin because she is effectively the presidential candidate now. This is more proof.

McCain's just some guy standing next to her at the end of the ad.

I know the Obama team thinks the winning strategy is to run against McCain. But if Obama and his strategists want to depict McCain as the candidate, they're going to have to force that idea back into the public's consciousness. And it's clearer every day that the McCainites are going to resist any effort to do that with all their power.

It's as if they've jettisoned the notion of McCain as the ticket's leader just the way they jettisoned Bush at the convention. It's as if they think it's the same kind of embarrassment.

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One more point: Democrats have had difficulty persuading some voters (especially PUMAs) that McCain is a right-winger rather than a "maverick." Well, please note that Palin's interview last night suggested a way to overcome this perception.

Palin's foreign policy answers were quite bellicose. (New York Post headline: WAR MOM PALIN TAKES HARD LINE.) And her flip-flop on global warming opens the door to talk about her previous denial of human involvement.

Use this. Add her views on abortion and her interesting in book banning and the fact that her town made rape victims pay for their own forensic kits until a state law banned the practice.

Then, if you want to focus on the guy who's technically at the top of the ticket, use all that to portray McCain as a dangerous right-winger. After all, this was the person he chose as a running mate.

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(Video via Politico.)