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Ahh so now the secret is out, John McCain’s running mate: Gov. Sarah Palin. It’s a pretty gutsy move on McCain’s part, but I think it was a bad move. I think McCain is trying to do three things with this pick:

1. Change the message of his campaign.
2. Appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters.
3. Appeal to the Republican Party base.

I watched Palin’s speech given in Ohio after the announcement was made (still haven’t found McCain’s making it or introducing her) and she really played up McCain as a maverick . They’re trying to bring the maverick/reformer McCain back into play. This is going to be a really hard sell. I think the Democrats (at least some of them) did a really good job this last week attaching McCain to President Bush, and they’re going to keep hammering it. I think the McCain campaign is trying to change the direction of their message to combat that, It’s going to be really hard to do it and it’s going to be harder to do it overnight with this pick. Not to mention that the maverick John McCain never really played well with the GOP base (see #3).

As far as appealing to Hillary Clinton supporters, I really don’t think this is going to happen, at least not the smart Hillary supporters. Palin really stands out as a far right conservative against many of the things Clinton is. Palin made reference to the “18 million cracks in the highest glass ceiling” but this is going to be a hard sell for any Clinton supporters. I think that it will help lock in the Republicans that changed party-id to vote for Clinton in the primaries. I think McCain already had these votes though and the Democrats did a good job speaking to the rest this last week. Not to mention that appealing to Clinton supporters and the Republican base are pretty difficult things to achieve at the same time.

As for appealing to the Republican base this was a fairly solid move. She’s pro-gun rights, anti-abortion, pro-drilling, pro-drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), and has huge approval ratings in Alaska (a steadfast Republican state). But appealing to the base is totally counter-intuitive with the other things McCain is trying to do with this pick and I’m completely confused as to how he expects to have his cake and eat it too.

She has some pretty solid negatives as well. Currently she’s under investigation on ethics violations for firing a state official because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law after his divorce with her sister. That isn’t going to go over well. She also completely removes on of McCain’s biggest arguments against Obama: that he’s too inexperienced. Palin has been governor of Alaska for two years and before that she was mayor and city council member of a city of less than 10,000 people. She has so little experience that she talked about being on the PTA at one of her kids schools during her introductory speech¹.

On the plus side she did put an end to Ted Stephens “Bridge to Nowhere.” This doesn’t outweigh the fact that I think Biden is going to make her look like someone with the experience of a child in the debates in a way McCain can’t even dream about doing to Obama.

Also I’m done doing Political bits here for a while, 4 posts in a row is a bit much.

On the Ballot in California this year will be “Proposition 8″ which in the voter information guide¹ is described as follows.

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments.

As I’m sure you know California became the second state to allow gays and lesbians to marry, Iowa was briefly the third. Californian (and national) social conservative groups went into an uproar over this and have decided to come to the defense of marriage. In order to overturn the California Supreme Court a constitutional amendment was proposed to define marriage in the California Constitution. To pass the measure requires only a simple majority.

Wait…. WHAT?! The United States Constitution is incredibly difficult to amend. It has to make it’s way through Congress by a super majority of two thrids of the Congress and then through three fourths of the state legislatures. In California you don’t even require a majority of the populace to weigh in. In theory three people could vote on Proposition 8, two of them for one against and the constitution would be amended². This isn’t tyranny of the majority here, it’s tyranny of the active minority!

There is a more fundamental issue at work here however. In my understanding of Constitutional Law (that’s US Constitution now) brings to mind the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ‘nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’

According to our Constitution, everyone, black, white, male, female, gay, straight is afforded equal protections under the law. You can’t discriminate via legislation or by state constitution. By denying gays and lesbians the ability to marry and enjoy the benefits that the states give to married couples you are discriminating based on a quality of the person. This isn’t a gay right to marriage, it’s a citizen’s right to equal treatment, and I have a great amount of difficulty understanding how people can’t see that.³

The current picture of the week was captured before the announcement of Senator Biden as the running mate for Barack Obama otherwise I would have likely commented on it then. I initially wasn’t sure what to think, frankly I was a little surprised that the Obama campaign went with the expected choice. Biden had been rumored and speculated on for days.

What does the selection of Biden mean for the ticket? Well first of all it means that the Obama campaign is concerned about the junior Senator’s foreign policy and experience credentials. Change is still the message of the Obama campaign though so how does picking an old Washington Hand change this? It doesn’t.

Obama’s change has always been about the control of special interests on American politics. It’s about the disenfranchisement of voters and the empowerment of those who feel powerless. It’s about a rolling back of the partisan bickering that has poisoned political discourse. It isn’t about being anti-experience or anti-Washington those are themes that others have tacked on, not Obama. In the primaries it was framed as change vs experience. This wasn’t because Obama was against those who were experienced, it was because he was a self proclaimed agent of change. Clinton however was a self proclaimed agent of experience.

How does Joe Biden fit into this rubric of change? Accepting political contributions from individuals has been a major cornerstone of the Obama campaign. According to OpenSecrets.org Biden has received 76% of his career campaign funding¹ from individual contributions but for 2006-2008 he recieved 96% of his contributions from individuals and 0% from PACs². Compare this to McCain with 80% individual contributions and 16% from PACs³ and you can see a sharp contrast and we’re not even talking about Obama-McCain, we’re talking Biden-McCain. Clearly Biden’s recent record individual contributions and taking PAC money is in line with the Obama camp.

How about empowering those who have been disenfranchised? This goes more to values and personalities than policy or platform but is worth noting. Biden is the lowest compensated member of the Senate. He’s the “poorest” Senator. If any Senator can relate to those who feel disconnected it’s probably Biden. The populist message has only recently become an element of Obama’s message of change but the influence of John Edwards is certainly there now.

Lastly, and I think most importantly, is Biden able to honestly champion Obama’s “post-partisan” message? I think he is. For the very reasons that he is being used to attack Obama by McCain:

Not only does Biden stand by what he says, and not try to twist the facts or weasel out of past actions by selective memory, he lauded his fellow Senator for the work that he’s done for our country. The “Change” of Obama isn’t about out with the old and in with the new. It’s about fixing what’s broken and keeping what isn’t. It’s about working with people and opening a dialog with them, especially if they don’t agree. Unfortunately I can’t find the exact line but Senator Obama said that he wanted to choose a running mate that would argue with him, debate matters with him and keep him on his toes.

So I think that even though Biden might not be the obvious candidate for change he can definitely fit into Obama’s change. Not to mention that he’s one hell of a fighter and I can’t wait to see the Obama campaign throw some punches by way of Biden allowing Obama to stay above the fray. They’ve needed a VP candidate for months.