What Sarah Palin means - Joan Walsh - 8/29 Salon.com
The contrast of age and gender means McCain and Palin didn't look like running mates standing together today in Dayton, but the McCain team is betting that's a good thing in a year when voters crave change. Palin is so unknown it's impossible to judge yet whether this was a smart pick for McCain. Certainly it's a great narrative: She's a gun-toting, motorcycle-riding, basketball-playing mother of five whose husband is a steelworker; you can see her talking kitchen table issues much more naturally than McCain or his wife, Cindy. McCain said as much today, noting that "she understands" the problems of rising gas and food prices. She lets the GOP continue to dream of making inroads among Hillary Clinton's female constituency. But the pick was really intended to wow the Christian right. Palin is a staunch antiabortion Christian conservative; every story about her notes that she chose not to abort her fifth child, now 4 months old, even after she discovered he had Down syndrome. (The fact that the decision is newsworthy creates a weird implication that a Democratic woman would make a different decision.)
I think choice is too central to the concerns of Democratic women to make Palin anything more than an attractive, interesting conservative politician, one they might admire, but never vote for.
The biggest question about Palin, though, is her lack of experience, especially in any role that gave her foreign policy perspective. She'll have a lot of work to do before debating Joe Biden.
Still, I can't help being a little pleased at the social change the pick makes real. A night after watching the first African-American accept the Democratic nomination, we woke to find the first woman had been chosen to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee. The race just got a lot more interesting.


8/30 from myyahoo page:

Salon:

• McCain's Palin pick is the epitome of tokenism - 7 hours ago Suddenly all anyone needs to qualify as a potential commander in chief is to be a religious ideologue with female gender characteristics?
• John McCain's female card - 19 hours ago By choosing an X-chromosome cipher, McCain is trying to beat Obama at the identity politics [race v gender] game. But it's dangerous to fight on your opponent's turf.
• Who's that lady? - 21 hours ago Did McCain just pick a woman to win the Hillary crowd? Members of Salon's Table Talk community weigh in on the female vote.

NY Times:

• Campaigns Shift as McCain Choice Alters the Race - 1 hour ago Both parties are trying to gauge the risks and opportunities of having a young, relatively inexperienced woman on the Republican ticket.
• Drawing Women’s Attention, Maybe Not Allegiance- 2 hours ago Some women see Sarah Palin as a winning choice, but others say she lacks experience and is on the wrong side of the issues that matter most to them.
• Unity Deferred: Can You Cross Out ‘Hillary’ and Write ‘Sarah’?- 1 hour ago Sarah Palin’s selection unleashes gender as a live issue again, just when Democrats thought they had it under control.