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Obama surrogates told to compare Sarah to Thomas Eagleton
(I'm just old enough to remember Tom Eagleton. If you aren't, read his Wikipedia bio here first.)

Marc Armbinder

In memos, e-mails and phone calls this week, Obama campaign officials have urged surrogates and allies to mention Republicans who are "nervous" about the Palin pick and to link those worries to George McGovern's aborted vice presidential pick of Thomas Eagleton in 1972, according to three Democratic surrogates.

That year, McGovern rescinded the pick after learning that Eagleton had been treated for depression. Questions about the thoroughness of the Palin vet have been raised, ...
by the Kos kiddies and Keith Olberman (pardon the redundancy)
... particularly about how and when Palin disclosed the news that her teenage daughter is pregnant and whether Palin's political resume had been thoroughly scrubbed.

On Wednesday, the campaign's chief surrogate wranglers distributed a three page compilation of alleged quotes from purported Republicans (some of whom may actually exist) concerned about the Palin pick. One surrogate said he had been urged to bring up the example of Eagleton in order to seed the idea that McCain might consider dropping him from the ticket.

Obama spokesperson Bill Burton said that surrogates haven't been pushed to mention Eagleton. "We did not give that guidance," he said.
Obviously, he lied.
Responding to Palin has been a challenge. In public, the Obama campaign has stuck to its message, noting that Palin's speech last night barely referenced the economy. Today, Obama told reporters that he didn't particularly mind Palin's jabs at him, and he then made one of his own: "I assume that she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated which means that their records are under scrutiny. I've been through this for 19 months. She's been through it, what for 4 days so far?"

One of the Democratic surrogates said that when he asked for guidance about Bristol Palin, Palin's pregnant daughter, his handler at the campaign told him that the campaign had nothing to say about it and did not want Democrats to mention it.
Professor Althouse comments:
You know, I remember the McGovern campaign. I was a big supporter of McGovern's, and I hated Nixon, as did all of my friends. And the scenario then was completely different from what you are seeing now. We were never excited about Eagleton in the first place. We just wanted McGovern to win. Eagleton didn't infuse new energy into the McGovern campaign or jazz up am important subset of voters. He was just some boring Senator that got slotted in. And then he brought nothing but trouble and distraction as the news came out that he'd been hospitalized for depression 3 times and had receive electroshock treatments. It wasn't just that there were a couple of old political controversies or a family member was less than perfect. We were getting significant new information about his brain, the brain that we might need to rely on to make presidential decisions. It was simply not acceptable, especially since he'd also withheld this information from McGovern, which showed some really poor character.
It should also be remembered that McGovern didn't come out looking very good, either. First, he said he was behind Eagleton "1000%"--then, two weeks later, he tossed him under the bus. Didn't make McG look very steady in a crisis. Even McGovern now admits that was a colossal mistake on his part.

McCain does not strike me as the sort of person who would bail on Sarah just because a bunch of Kos Kiddies have gone all attack-dog on her
The Palin candidacy has virtually nothing in common with the Eagleton scenario, and the people who are saying it does are displaying their desperation. Obviously -- I'm not the first to say this -- if you want McCain to lose and you think she's so terrible, you should be happy to see Palin as the VP nominee. It will help defeat McCain.

Posted by: Mike 2008-09-05
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=249241