Why are so many people at TPM busy smearing Sarah Palin, the person?

I think it's because they believe that by simultaneously praising Hillary (she's no longer a threat) and taking Sarah down they will pursuade themselves that those misguided, desperate Hillary voters will not vote for the McCain ticket.

It's becoming very clear that the vast majority of Obama supporters have absolutely no clue as to what motivated Hillary voters throughout the primaries and how they changed during that process.

I believe that the process of becoming a Hillary Voter was slow and was complicated by campaign events. But the main trajectory can be easily distilled to three key points:

- Many women became somewhat skeptical of Obama around the time when the "Messiah" comments first appeared in the press. On a certain level a cocky smooth operator, high on emotion but low on specifics, was a very personal and powerful stereotype for many women, especially single mothers. I recall first hearing comments like this at least four months before Iowa.

- As the campaign became more heated, the amount of sexism and Hillary-hate in the media spilled over into prime-time. That complicated everything because it allowed many women to feel sympathy towards Hillary.

- When the Obama campaign decided to add the personal dimension to their attacks on Hillary (time of the month, claws come out, etc), they pushed many of these women away from his candidacy, because Obama and the media were basically on the same train now.

If you read the leaked memos in "The Atlantic", you will remember that from the beginning of the campaign Mark Penn was pointing out that women voters would view Hillary favorably and that she should campaign hard to get them into her camp.

What happened was two-fold:
- Obama and the media campaigned to push them away by attacking Hillary as a person
- Hillary campaigned to take advantage of her favorability with women and to turn herself into their champion

As the campaign unfolded, the animosity grew and polarized the two campaigns and the vague skepticism towards Obama became an outright hostility, due to the reasons I mentioned above.

I am convinced that the sexism of the Obama campaign was an un-intended by product of hard competition. But it was there and his supporters fanned it and made it worse.

What we are dealing with now is the fruit of that. And by either demonizing Palin or reducing her to a clueless bimbo, we are re-tracing the process of driving people away from Obama. Doing the same thing all over again and somehow expecting a different result.

And because of the history of the primaries, it will now take half the time to turn an undecided woman into a Hillary 2.0 voter. Or force a Hillary voter to consider Sarah Palin. All you have to do is to show them that you will treat any woman the same way as you treated Hillary.

Compare her to Monica Lewinsky, call her a bimbo, call her a Trophy VP (look at the recommended list for more inspiration).

Let me tell you something: every time you smear Sarah Palin instead of focusing on the consequences of McCain/Palin election, you prove that you are only an average student of Karl Rove despite all your efforts.

The trick is not to give Hillary voters a Hillary substitute.

The trick is to make Obama supporters themselves, online and in the real world, push women away from the Obama campaign, in spite of Obama's and Clintons' efforts to unite the party in Denver. Suddenly, it feels as if Denver never happened.

McCain's gamble is simple. Sarah Palin was selected to help rally the base of the Republican Party. And to rally the Obama supporters to further alienate undecided women or Hillary supporters. For free.

And by doing exactly that, you prove that you are the worst friend Obama could ever have.