Palin choice disasterous to Obama campaign

I think that the McCain/Palin decision is possibly fatal for the Obama campaign. The reason is summed up in the maxim used to describe how to do successful competitive analysis:

Don't look for your opponent's weakness. He'll change that, if he wants to be successful. Instead, look for the weakness in his strength. He doesn't want to change that.

If there's a single issue that has driven (and will continue) to drive the electorate this year, it's the complete disgust with the status quo. Large majorities believe that the country is on the wrong track. Obama beat Clinton on this with a single word:

Change

Kiss that one goodbye. And no, the reason is not that Palin is a woman. It's because while he talks a good reform game, she's an actual, you know, reformer. She has an actual record - she took on her own party for corruption and beat it. When you look at Obama's record in Chicago (to get along with the Machine, you go along with the Machine), she is walking, breathing rebuke to his entire brand.

The debates you hear right now about "experience" are entirely beside the point. Same thing with the talk about Hillary supporters crossing over. Sure, some (maybe a lot) will, but what's important is why they cross over.

McCain just let all the air out of Obama's balloon, and it's going to take a miracle for him to get it back. He'll have to come up with a completely new message, one that resonates with the electorate to the same level that "change" does, and get that out to the voters. Maybe he can, but that's not where the smart money bets.

300 Electoral Votes for McCain this November. Minimum.

Mark Steyn has a must read on Palin, and no, it's not just for the title of the post ("The Hostest with the Moostest").