He won the delegates which is why he's the nominee. According to the Politico article HRC's staff didn't even understand the delegate process.

He won the pledged delegate count by any measure and that's how the Superdelegates choose because overturning the pledged delegate count is overturning the basic result since the "popular vote" is too sketchy to rely on due to the caucuses.

Just to remind you, Obama won under the exact same system that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry won under; by "manipulation of the caucuses", you mean actually going and competing for those states which is just good strategy in a close primary where you need to squeeze every delegate out.

I agree with the post. Best not to give Palin much attention until she gets up in the D ticket's face. But a good start for everyone would be to start ignoring the PUMAs online and remain focused on issues. The overwhelming majority of Hillary supporters--like me--have moved on and Obama is our candidate with a vengeance. PUMAs obviously have issues. Forget 'em. They are irrelevant to the election at hand.

To ignore her during their debate would be a mistake.  He's there to debate with her, and he should debate with her.  He should just avoid any personal issues and the whole inexperience thing.  He should debate her as a peer, treat her with respect, but destroy her stances on the issues.

Run commercials on the issues.  And hammer them on the anniversary of Katrina, emphasizing what McCain and Bush were doing while NOLA drowned.  Over and over, show the pictures of the guitar and the birthday cake.

After that, treat Palin with respect, as an equal, just as if gender doesn't matter.  Take some time to get to know her -- facts only.  Then go after her on the issues, avoid the inexperience issue, absolutely avoid anything even close to misogyny, and just show how wrong she is on big issues like ANWR, anti-abortion regardless of circumstances, her support of the Republican party, etc.

Some time has to be spent on finding out her stance on issues like Iraq, economy, education, etc.  Then go after those issues too.

Give her credit where credit is due, and oppose her on issues where she is wrong.

I've been very disappointed with the Republican party for many years, primarily in how they have lost their way on fiscal conservatism.  Though I've been committed, I've also been very pissed that my own party can't currently control its appetites for the sake of politics.  

I have been following Palin closely for the last 6 months.  I had been really hoping that she would be the pick for the reasons that seem to be lining up now, though I was not very optimistic.
I kept a close eye on the grassroots "Palin for VP" site.  On Thursday evening, a mystery poster appeared on that site (campaign operative?), and to a small group started leaking small pieces of information at a time.  Normally, I would be quite skeptical, but this poster was consistently a few hours ahead of the curve of what later was coming out in the press. At around 11PM PST, he told us while he couldn't give out specifics, he believed we would be "very happy tomorrow".  Shortly thereafter, another poster started piecing together the flight plan, etc. and before long we pretty much knew it was hers (pretty cool, about 10 hours ahead of the press).  Retrospectively, the poster was dead-on-accurate in everything he said.

Speaking purely with an "analyst" hat on, I'll offer to this group one theme that came out. I'm paraphrasing now, but basically he said that the leak of information to the Palin for VP blog was a "gift" and that McCain had been watching the activity on this blog for a very long time.  Given his accuracy on everything else, I see no reason to dispute this.

Since the mystery poster was accurate about so many things, my conclusion is that this was not a last-minute reactive decision made by McCain's campaign.  Though it may have only been a done deal recently, it had some substantial probability for some time.  If I am right, and that's a big if... then unbeknownst to us all, Palin has been likely studying her behind off and is walking into a well-scripted last act of the campaign.  My guess is that the McCain campaign wants to the attacks to happen in order to keep expectations low, giving her every opportunity to hit it out of the park.  Whether that will actually occur is entirely up to the capabilities of Palin and this is all super risky, but if successful a stroke of genius (in my opinion).

My reason for bringing this up is that while I am a male, I do think that the constant sexism discussion is not only destructive to your party's cause, it is also generally destructive for all of us, independent of party.

Being a Republican, I'm probably stupid to even bring this up to you, since perpetuating the attacks probably only helps my own political interest in this election.

If you are sincerely interested in knowing "how the other side thinks", I can tell you that, as a Republican, I see all of the qualities that Palin brings to my interests first, and then I see that she is a woman.  My pride is sincere, though some here will probably argue that it is misplaced.  My wife and I were practically in tears during yesterday's speech since, since for many reasons - not just one, this sends a positive signal to us.

That's what this risky pick by McCain told me.  If there was anything to the rumors about Obama, the GOP would not have gambled this big.  

They would not have had to take a risk, if they had anything on even one of the rumors.  They don't.