I generally agree with Ambinder's sentiment here. Palin is going to make a number of women rethink their partisan alliance for this election, and will undoubtedly make a few switch sides. That's just the breaks. Obama knew it when he didn't choose a female VP, and thank God he didn't. Kathleen Sebelius might be the least promising rising star in the Democratic Party (has she ever given a good speech), and putting HRC on the ticket would be fraught with complications so extensive that it's not surprising Obama never considered it seriously. And after that you get to back-benchers and newbies. I think, for example, that Amy Klobuchar is an immensely promising civil servant out of Minnesota and might well be on a national ticket in a few election cycles, but two relatively unknown people on a ticket--that's not a good idea. Not now.
So some Dem and Independent women will take a look at McCain's ticket. And the timing is fortuitous in one respect: women who might be interested in taking a second look will be able to check out the RNC next week! (Of course, if this year's RNC is anything like the one four years ago, I doubt too many women will be enchanted.) But then again, I'm not sure a Friday announcement is the most effective way of doing things--especially a Friday announcement before Labor Day. The media world is abuzz, but this deliberate attempt to take the news cycle away from Obama (which I suspect was a nontrivial part of this selection) will come at a time when most people are away from the TV/newspaper/etc. Coulda been better.
I'm not too worried about massive Dem defections to the GOP ticket. Consider the 2006 Maryland Senate Race. The GOP cleared the field for Black Republican Lt. Governor Michael Steele, while the Dems had a close-fought primary between Rep. Ben Cardin, who is White, and former NAACP head and former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who is Black. Cardin won narrowly, and there was talk of a big defection of Black voters to the GOP. Truth be told, Steele did better among the demographic than most Republicans do--he won over 20%. But he lost the race by 10 points. And the Steele campaign definitely traded on identity politics to woo Black voters--of which Maryland has a large population. Still, at the end of the day, the vast majority of Black voters stuck with the party that they felt best defended their interests (right-leaners might argue that they remained mindlessly partisan, but which is worse: mindless partisanship or mindless bowing to identity politics?).
Now, obviously, the presidency is different than a senate race. Is the identity factor going to be more or less important to voters when choosing a leader than when choosing one of 100? I simply don't know. I would hope that Gov. Palin is judged on her merits. She's a woman but she's objectively worse on women's issues from abortion to equal pay and minimum wage than the Obama/Biden ticket. I suppose that we Dems will just have to trust voters to see this pick for what it is. And you know what? In this campaign, the voters haven't let us down yet.
