Palin's Big Bang

The Sarah Palin Effect? A convention bounce for McCain of as much as 13 points. Barack's bounce averaged a little over 4 points.

USA Today/Gallup - McCain up 10%
Gallup Tracking - McCain up 5%
Rasmussen - McCain up 1%
ABC News/Wash Post 2%

Jake Tapper reports on his ABC News Blog that:

There are Obama supporters who feel Clinton needs to make a strong case against Palin. And they are intrigued -- and troubled -- by the fact that she won't.

While the New York Times reports:

The names at the top of the ballot on Nov. 4 will be McCain and Obama, but the juicier battle this fall for an important group of swing voters — white working women with children — may be fought between the other two stars of the Republican and Democratic conventions, Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hillary can't just root for Barack to lose anymore so that she can run in four years. Now she has Vice President Sarah Palin to worry about. It ain't easy being Hillary!!!

She has no intention of turning over her “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling,” as she called her supporters, to Ms. Palin, a social conservative whose policy positions are poison in Hillaryland. What is more, Mrs. Clinton wants to be the one to make history as the first woman to win at the top of a presidential ticket, be it in 2012 or 2016.

Consider, also, how Obama looks if he has to send Hillary out to protect him from Sarah!

Clinton advisers say that Mrs. Clinton wants to do everything she can to elect Mr. Obama, so that she cannot be blamed if he loses — yet she also does not want to be too closely associated with him if he does lose, nor to tarnish her own image by taking on a rookie national politician like Ms. Palin and possibly coming up short.