McCain did NOT choose Palin! Focus Groups chose Palin for McCain. Can McCain still win 2008?

Most people assume that McCain chose Palin as his running mate. But think about it: Palin is a person who McCain had met ONLY ONCE before, and do you really assume that he chose her personally? Once McCain was asked how he decided to choose Palin and he said jokingly “We threw darts on a board”, but in this joke he came frighteningly close to the truth. What really happened is this: In order to win they have to do what the masses like. And in order to measure what the masses like, he has set up this Focus Group at this ranch and these Focus Groups are asked all sorts of questions in order to make sure that the right things are done. Obviously, if they put Guiliani next to McCain as running mate, his chances got even worse. Most choices made him score worse, but ONLY PALIN made him look better in the votes. So as a result of the Focus Group Palin got chosen. The problem with Focus Groups is however, that decisions made by those are often not with much foresight. The immediate response of the Focus Group to Palin was positive, and indeed, at the GOP Convention the appearance of Palin resulted in an All-Time high for McCain’s election polls, reaching and temporarily surpassing Obama’s. What the focus groups were NOT able to foresee (and they typically never have much foresight, since they operate just on the whim of the moment) was that in the subsequent weeks Palin would be dissected by the media, and all sorts of flaps found, and the initial advantage turned negative.

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If you use Focus Groups to play chess, you will always get the popular moves, however they don’t have much long-term strategic value, and are typically short-sighted. So now McCain’s chances of winning look like this: