The Links

Here's Obama on the stump yesterday. It's pretty impressive. Remember he's doing this every day, nearly all day long. It's not like this was a particularly well planned event or anything.

Here's a pretty comprehensive Palin story from Time. It's interesting how he's almost reverted to primary Obama in terms of inspiring rhetoric. He's got to be loving the temporary focus on Palin.

In more Palin news, the current intrade markets are giving Palin a 15% chance of being recalled as a VP pick.

Huh?

Sarah who? I hate posts like this because I feel like a hopeless Democratic hack, but seriously? My first reaction was to bring up her wikipedia page. I knew she was the first term governor of Alaska, but nothing else. Before that she was apparently the mayor of a town with a population of 5,000. Before that, she was a councilwoman in that same city. Before that she was first runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest. I guess she's also involved in a moderately sized abuse of power scandal back in Alaska.

Huh? Sarah Palin? Everyone seems to believe this is an overt attempt to get Clinton Democrats on board, but I simply don't understand how that's going to happen. Clinton's whole appeal was predicated upon the image of her being a tough, established, experienced (and fairly hawkish) figure. Almost no one in the United States has heard of Sarah Palin. She won the Alaska governorship by pulling in 114,000 votes, the most she's ever received. This seems like an overt attempt to co-opt Obama's change message. He's paid lip-service to the idea before, but (smartly) had predicated his whole campaign on fear and mistruths meant to emphasize Obama's "otherness". This pick really muddles that message for me, and makes him answer a bunch of questions he should be avoiding.

I'm kind of dumbfounded. Other reactions?