I think he'd be forced to drop out too.
I mean, there's all kinds of hypocrisy everywhere in the race. It's not like McCain could lecture black fathers on not doing a good enough job in America. Obama could get away with forgetting something obvious while McCain might be accused of having a "senior moment."
I just find it sort of profound that it's not [rightly] a big deal for Palin.
Maybe, but I don't think so.
Among those who do care about these things, the only difference is that there might be more discussion about whether the girl will terminate the pregnancy. That line of questioning is strikingly absent from all discussions regarding Palin, but they might not be if it were Obama's daughter. And, frankly, in Obama's daughter's case it might be handled secretly enough and early enough that the pregnancy goes unnoticed by the public anyway. It is Palin's family's pro-life position that really makes the difference. Not her gender. Not her ethnicity. And because of her position the girl is largely regarded as heroic for having the baby. The pro-life crowd is differently, and more intensely, motivated than the abortion rights crowd. I cannot imagine that the heroic aspect of a girl choosing to abort the child would be emphasized by an abortion rights crowd the way that of a girl choosing to have a baby clearly is by the abortion opponents. As nearly as I can tell, it is for them the only way. And if Obama's daughter did choose to have the baby, it may be the case that there are fifty-million plus cultural conservatives who were just waiting to be told that she made the right decision and who become overjoyed. They would probably argue that any life as valuable as any other, but because it would not have involved a candidate under any serious consideration to begin with I don't think votes would be swung by the decision. That's just a guess, though.
Among the media types, most of whom are Democrats (this is demonstrable), it would probably be played down. Among those brutes (O'Reilly, Olbermann, Nancy Grace) whose diatribes center on making sure you understand things the way you ought to, the types of things that are said would largely be the same, it would just be the Olbermann of the world saying it instead of Sean Hannities of the world. The text would largely read the same. There would be massive news coverage of the story, just as in Palin's case, and there would be nasty threads about Obama's family, just as there are those about Palin's family here. And some would say that it is now clear that Obama was a poor choice for the Democrats, just as many are now saying that Palin was a poor choice for the Republicans.
Among those of use who don't much give a damn one way or the other, and who think that far too much media attention is given to Palin's approaching grandmotherhood--I think there may be more of us than the sum of the other two groups, but we are less vocal--I do not think there's going to be any difference. This I think goes for both the subset of McCain supporters who feel that way and the subset of Obama supporters who feel that way. There's always hypocrisy, but the result would be the same.
