Today, I went to the grocery store and I saw many of the local neighborhood folks.  One of the topics that came up was McCain’s running mate.  My district went big time for Clinton during the primaries and people were intrigued by McCain’s VP choice.  I have to say as a former Hillary supporter, I was very intrigued by her good looks, family background, and the fact that she eats moose burgers.  Many of the people I talked to thought the fact that she ate moose burgers was weird, but I thought it was cool.

One woman, white, 65 years old and a former Hillary supporter, gave her thoughts on Sarah Palin being picked as VP.  She thought, why, when there are so many other republican women to choose from with more experience.  See, one of her big things during the primary was that Obama didn’t have enough experience compared to Hillary.  Now McCain’s running mate has even less experience then Hillary.  She goes on to say in blunt terms, that this is a major form of affirmative action but not in a good way.  She says that this is a form of sexism that isn’t being covered.  I thought, sexism?, I know McCain’s history isn’t very fair towards women, but I didn’t see sexism when he chose a women VP.  But, she explained it.  She asks, “Why chose an inexperience women when you have other qualified women?”.  She goes on to say that when climbing the corporate ladder, many qualified women get passed over because some young hot woman comes in and because of her looks she gets the position.  I thought, well, Im hot and I didn’t get where I am because Im hot.

Then she said, its like when your boss passes you over for promotion, to promote the secretary who’s cute, but way less experience.  Its like when you have worked in a company for years and suddenly a younger less experienced woman gets the job, because she’s beautiful and put a good “face” on the company profile.  Many of the women around agreed with her, and I have to admit, I was starting to see her point.   They said, they have experienced the same thing in their lives.  They also thought that, why on earth would this woman be given a job that’s a heartbeat away for the presidency, it just doesn’t make sense.  Especially when McCain is 72 years old and has several occurrences of cancer.

I then brought up the argument, “Well what about Obama/Biden?”.  They didn’t see an issue with it, which I was really surprised with.  They thought that if something happened to Obama, god forbid, people would trust Biden to be president.  And, nothing happens to Obama, Obama is still more experienced and has Biden there to make for a great team.  One lady said, that by putting an inexperience women on the ticket will ruining women’s progress in politics.  She explained that when Sarah performs horribly in the debate with Biden, considering the fact that he’s experience on every major issue for this election, that more Americans will conclude unfairly that women aren’t qualified for this position and they will have an example to prove their point.  One of the women said she already made up her mind after the democratic convention to support Obama and that this obvious strategic play for women isn’t going to move her.  She thought it was an insult that McCain would think that she would vote for a women, just because she a women.  I was happy to hear that Obama’s speech, as well as, Michelle’s, Hillary’s and Bill’s speeches, were able to point out what’s at stake in this election, and that voting out of spite never progresses women.

Obama has more experience in elected office and has represented 9 times the amount of people that Sarah represents.  He had to deal with big city issues in the state legislator, like crime, housing and taxes for all the people he represented.  He’s on the veterans affair committees he has help get funding for wounded troops after they return home.  He’s on the Foreign Relations committee, and Europeans Affairs subcommittee.  He has cast thousands of votes and written legislation and passed bills.  He has met with world leaders and even Maliki agree with his Iraq timetable.  Joe Biden has even done more, and has been more outspoken on women’s issues then Sarah.  She hasn’t debated or thought through large scale issues, and she shown it because when asked, she couldn’t even tell us McCain’s Iraq plan and then suggested she doesn’t think about that stuff.  Sure, her story is compelling but every candidate in this race has a compelling story.  I refuse to be labeled as a typical women who votes on emotion rather then voted based on facts, policy and record.  2004 security moms voted for Bush because of emotion and I refuse to be that women.  So, after talking at the local grocery store we agreed, that picking a woman who’s inexperienced, especially when there’s other women to chose from, isn’t going to get our votes.

Today, Sensico pointed out that she didn’t even know McCain’s Iraq plan during an interview.  She also implied that she doesn’t care and doesn’t want to talk about it. This women use to support Pat Buchanan to the very end even after he gave his speech, when he ran for president in 1999, who was a sexist when he ran for president then and made very sexist remarks about Hillary during the primary, which got many Hillary supporters like me kind of angry.  Pat Buchanan showed his love of Sarah today on MSNBC and said she was a foot soldier for him.  President Bush is ecstatic that shes on the ticket.  Sarah is to the right of her party, which isn’t good.  She has an investigation on her now which proves she wasn’t really vetted.  McCain only met her twice before he officially announced she was his VP.  While all the other potential women VP picks, he has met numerous times.  She left the town she was mayor of, nearly bankrupt and they are still paying for it.  She didn’t know what a vice president did, and we still don’t know if she figured it out.  Yilian pointed out that she called Hillary a whiner during the primary.  She’s a governor of a remote state that doesn’t compare to big cities on the main land.  She’s a supporter of Ted Stevens who’s under indictment.  She believes that intelligent design should be taught in schools.  Shes a staunch hater of Roe v. Wade, even in the event of incest and rape, and like McCain, wants to overturn it.  She’s been a governor for less then two years.  She’s also known for backstabbing and poor temperament.  She was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.  I don’t know how they do things in Alaska but this just isn’t right for out next vice president.

All these things are the reasons I won’t be voting for McCain/Palin.  Not only do they not represent my stances on issues, but any little chance of me voting for McCain rested on how he would make his first executive decision.  He failed miserably.  Not only by passing over more qualified women but, by picking someone who is just going to be a yes girl for McCain.  Sarah Pelin shares McCain’s stances on issues, how is that being a maverick.  A maverick would has picked someone who was conservative, but slightly different from him on important issues.  McCain has a 50/50 chance of being president, and god forbid something happens to a 72 year old president, and based on history and the fact that president age quicker it isn’t looking good, our country will be controlled by Sarah Pelin, a conservatives dream.

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