Yes, the Palin selection has served to take the spotlight off the Obama campaign-for now.
But here’s the thing. Obama ended the Democratic Convention on a high. He got a nice “convention bounce” from it.
The GOP’s main campaign tactic has been to attack Obama. The negative campaigning has been overshadowed by Palin and now, Gustav. That’s a plus for Obama, in my opinion.
Meanwhile, the “novelty” of a woman candidate is not great at all. She’s no Hillary Clinton; in fact, she seems like the very palest of imitations of Clinton. Palin’s selection is not even that historic: Geraldine Ferraro was chosen for Democratic VP over 20 years ago. The media is not going to fawn over Palin because she’s a woman.
Indeed, just the opposite may happen. As a new face on the national scene, the media will go full bore to see who and what she is as a person and a politician. Every gaffe and stumble will be magnified under the glare of the media spotlight, and it’s fair to say she’s untested in these circumstances. The pressure on her could be enormous.
My view of public opinion on Palin is, most (non-Republicans) fear she is not qualified. The GOP will need to devote (media) resources to prop up her image.
Those resources could have been used to go after Obama. Palin could wind up being a distraction for the McCain campaign that sucks up energy and attention from going negative on Barack, or propping up McCain.
So yes, McCain is getting a lot of coverage from this, in the short term. But I don’t think the Palin selection raises McCain’s positive ratings (among non-GOP) voters; the effect is probably neutral, at best. Meanwhile, it will have no effect on Obama’s positives or negatives (or at least, none that I can see now).
All the Dems have to do is avoid a backlash from women who feel Palin is being unfairly treated (ie, the "high tech lynching defense"), and I think this winds up as a plus for the Obama/Biden ticket.