Maybe some here or there, but its ridiculous to claim that McCain lost because of Palin or even lost a single state because of her. Maybe Indiana and North Carolina but thats it. The election turned the way it did because of the economic crisis.
Sarah Palin is a wonderful person. Don't let the press fool u, shes a great gal.
But, she did cost McCain dearly. Lieberman was not the right running mate for him, but someone like Romney, Voinovich, or Pawlenty were good choices. With one of them, McCain could have held Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Virgina, Indiana, and Ohio. That way, New Hampshire could have flipped the election to him. Then, he could have carried Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, and maybe Nevada. That would be a great victory. However, Palin turned off a lot of swing voters and independent voters that were key to McCain doing the scenario above.
Romney, Voinovich, and Pawlenty were all solid running mates who would have helped McCain a ton. I think that McCain would have been surprised.
And with Clinton as the nominee...Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Maine...these all become battleground states. Just changing the running mate would have done wonders for McCain.
Voinovich?
Far too old. McCain needed to balance age on the ticket not double down on it.
The McCain campaign didn't even anticipate that places like IN and VA would be as bad as they were and didn't put the effort he should have to counteract Obama's efforts in them. There was far more to McCain losing, then Palin. And he would have won with her had the economy not been heading down hill. Quayle didn't tank Bush 41 in 1988 and Palin would not have been enough on her own to sink McCain.
I doubt McCain would have won given the direction of the economy throughout all of 2008. Remember that the unemployment rate had moved from 4.4% in mid 2007 to 6.1% by August 2008.
And it would have made a difference, McCain should have personally called Bush and asked him to guarantee Lehman's assets so they could sell it to Barclays and avoid a crisis. If McCain really wanted to win, this is what he would have done.
