Moose is damn good if you’d put down your damn Yankee hanger steaks, STFU, and take a damn bite for once in your damn Yankee lives. Lean, tasty. Not gamey either. Not if it’s cooked right, the way Sarah Palin does it.

Exactly! Now you’re catching on!

Well, not *you*, Sister W., in particular. Well-meaning Democrats in general. If they want to win.

I think she’s a ludicrous choice for Vice President, given her resume. John McCain picked her to appeal to the evangelical vote, not because he believed in her excellence as a leader.

I’m here to rant, not to keep quiet!

Democrats have lost two presidential elections they expected to win, and could have won, because the contempt of many non-political Dems towards “flyover country” was only too apparent. Senator Obama is wise enough to know this; that’s one reason why he’s trying to stay out of it, and that’s probably why the Daily Kos people have, so I hear, taken down some of their nastier slurs aginst Mrs Palin.

I know you and others think that the Republicans stole those elections, but any election so close that it’s won or lost on the basis of a few hundred or even a few thousand votes (an election in which many millions of votes are cast) is statistically a tie. A few thousand votes are within the margin of error.

As for your question, my answer is a qualified yes – if Mrs Palin shows herself, in the heat of the fray that is to come, to be intelligent and well-informed.

p.s. Full disclosure: my family has roots in western Canada, and many of them hunt, carry guns, ride snowmobiles, hold union cards, and vote Conservative, and yet speak several languages, listen to classical music, and read books.

I can make fun of Mrs. Palin, because I’m not running for office.

Even though you are Canadian, Clio, would you want Sarah Palin to be in a position where she could be president of the US?

Here is what I was trying to point out: if there is the slightest suspicion in the “heartland” that she was forced out by nasty comments or mudslinging on the part of Democrats – even if Obama stays well out of the fray – Obama will probably lose an election he would have won. I am arguing against my own interest here, but I am telling the truth.

Democratic supporters must learn that they cannot win elections by making fun of the way a large part of the electorat lives and thinks. Making fun of Mrs Palin’s hair, her beauty queen past, her “hick” lifestyle, or her prolife politics, will not win your party the support of conservative voters. I know many Democrats believe that such people are a lost cause anyway, but it’s not true. Many Christian evangelicals, many Catholic conservatives, are worried about the environment; many “fiscal conservatives” are worried about the cost of the war. Most of them are not like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. I read these people; but I suspect you don’t. Some of them might, just might, vote Democrat – but not if Democrat hard-liners ridicule all their most basic beliefs, or slang them as hypocrites.