For all of us who might be crowing about McCain's VP choice, don't count your chickens before they hatch. More on the flip side.
There are two ways of looking at this VP choice. The media is playing on the fact that McCain is trying to pick up women (and more specifically angry Hillary supporters). This first theory is flawed because Palin is so far to the right it isn't funny. In the end she's going to cost McCain more women voters than she gains.
That brings me to the second potential reason for picking Sarah Palin as VP. John McCain is convinced that he can motivate independents and angry democrats by himself. I'm starting to think that he actually believes all of this maverick nonsense that he's constantly spouting. Picking Palin as a VP has less to do with the fact that she's a woman and more to do with the fact that she's extreme right-wing. John McCain can't motivate the right-wing base, but he's hoping his pick of Sarah Palin can. With the numbers the way they are at the moment, it could be a very close election. This means that John McCain's best and only chance of sealing the deal is to find a way to motivate the right-wingers to come out and vote (think George Bush and his promise of being a "compassionate conservative" and the resulting uber-religious movement that got him elected). If anything the fact that she is a woman only helps to distract us from the real goal. As long as the media is running around parroting about disaffected Hillary supporters, then we aren't paying attention to what this is really about.