The day McCain lost the election: August 29, 2008. The day he picked Palin. Seattle Times.

As blue as our state is, it's not so blue that a freewheeling Republican like John McCain couldn't win here.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen now. After traveling around the state these past two weeks, I think I can pinpoint the precise day McCain lost it.

August 29, 2008. The day he picked Sarah Palin.

What an irony Palin turned out to be. Nothing seems to be driving women to Barack Obama faster than the first female on a national ticket in 24 years.

Like Patricia West, a retired teacher from Mount Vernon. She was considering McCain last summer. Not any more.

"It's such a letdown, it's so obvious she's unqualified," said West, 71. "What gets me is the only reason she's in there is because she has two X chromosomes. That's as cynical and as sexist as if they'd excluded someone for being a woman."

I heard this theme from women across the state. That Palin's a token. Worse — and this is clearly unfair, but it's the trailblazer's curse — is a sense she's somehow setting back the clock for all women.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2008267851_danny15.html

know she wasn't picked for her brains. Even republican women think she's a joke and an insult to our gender.

tokenism is so blatantly not only unqualified for the job but joins mccain in the only presiential candidate team in US History to both be guilty of Ethics Violations BEFORE the election.

"mccain-palin is the only national ticket where "both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election."


"A HISTORIC TICKET.... Now that Sarah Palin has been found to have abused her powers, violated state ethics, and lied about it, I did a little digging and found an interesting historical footnote.

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.

McCain, of course, was admonished by Senate Ethics Committee "for exercising 'poor judgment' for intervening" with federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, as part of the infamous Keating Five scandal.

And now McCain's running mate has also been found to have violated state ethics laws and abused the powers of her office, as part of the "Troopergate" scandal.

"The nation has had 102 major-party tickets covering 51 presidential elections over more than two centuries. And we've never had a ticket in which both candidates on the same ticket were responsible for ethics violations before a national election. McCain/Palin is the first."

It makes the whole "reform" pitch a little more difficult, doesn't it?"

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