Caveat: Running Mates

I really haven't been impressed with how the U.S. presidential candidates picks of running mates has played out. Obama played it excessively safe, and frankly I've always found Biden to be almost creepily inauthentic – an old-school democrat machine politician as far as I can tell. And now a vote for Obama isn't an unambiguous vote for "change," after all. 

Meanwhile, McCain chose a total wildcard in Palin. Pandering to the youth and female vote without actually managing to cross the line into something genuine or exciting. In actuality, if we look at her positions, Palin is more plausible if we read her as a fillip for the conservative, Christian-right base of the Republican party, who just "happens to be" female and relatively youthful. But she, also, therefore manages to make McCain's efforts to be a "different" sort of Republican – less beholden to the far-right – completely moot.

Their actions lowered my interest or desire to vote for either of them, and I am forced to return to my basic motivation: I will probably vote for Obama not because of what he stands for be merely because I perceive the Republicans to be the more dangerous brand of hypocrite, currently.

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