As far as I'm aware, he wanted Lieberman and caved to more conservative members of his party. Wikipedia seems to agree[1]. It does also say that he selected Palin because she appeared to be someone who would bolster his "maverick" image. He later regretted the choice.
Obama won in a post 9/11 America while being black and having Hussein as his middle name I don’t think a Jewish VP would’ve been harder to sell even to the Republican base.
Not to mention two old white guys going up against the first black nominee. The fact that Palin was a women likely bolstered the arguments to choose her a great deal.
There’s a few stories out there. The common thread is that the vetting process wasn’t done and nobody realized what a shitshow Palin was.
Whomever made the decision, it was a rash move that proved that a low caliber, not so smart, but media savvy national candidate could win the support needed to be president. It led to 2016.
Having a gun toting female vp on the republican ticket would have been a strategic move had she not been such a dumpster fire, so I see where he was going with it. Unfortunately for America it propelled her into the national spotlight and we were subjected to her idiotic rambling for years.
"Not so smart guy" that somehow reached the peak of 3 major fields, including one where he was grossly outgunned and outfunded. "Low calibre" that's somehow supercharging our economy.
I remember reading an AskReddit thread about "have you ever met Trump, what was he like?", it was nothing but amazing stories about his incredible gifts of memory, his intelligence, and his generosity. This of course was back when Trump was still a Democrat. After becoming a Republican he's suddenly a bumbling senile fool who just stumbled into the Presidency over someone who raised 3x the money and had all the establishment support. An amazing example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
