Like much of the mainstream media, CNN anchor Jack Cafferty has set aside any pretense of objectivity in this year's presidential election.  On today's Situation Room he used a "Cafferty File" segment, in which a question is posed to viewers for their response, to attack GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  He prefaced the question:

But McCain chose Sarah Palin, who immediately became a national joke to everybody, except the conservative base of the Republican Party. Even some Republicans are convinced the Palin selection showed a total lack of judgment on McCain's part.

Oh, what about Florida Governor Charlie Crist? Would winning Florida help John McCain? You get the idea here.

Here's the question: Was it a mistake for John McCain to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate?

Last Thursday, his question for viewers was if they think John McCain has run an honorable campaign.  Some of his background "information":

In fact, in the last few weeks, John McCain has become downright nasty.

If you want to see an example of the media employing a subtle undercurrent of disdain for Republicans and praise for Democrats, you can't get any better example than the masterful effort at left leaning propaganda that the Boston Herald unleashed on October 26. Even the headline is artful for the negative image in which it casts McCain’s actions while simultaneously presenting Obama as the innocent victim. The subtlety is amazing and really must be seen to be believed.

With the very headline we see that nasty McCain and the obviously innocent Obama as the Herald sternly informs us that, "John McCain keeps swinging socialist hammer at Barack Obama." That mean, "hammering" McCain "swinging" that obviously absurd claim that the Marxist is a socialist! Imagine. The negative image of McCain being an aggressor is painfully obvious.

Your humble correspondent would like to thank Huffington Post blogger, Benjamin R. Barber, for giving him a hearty bellylaugh this morning for conjuring up the image of a traumatized Barack Obama getting "moosed" by Sarah Palin. However, on the way to delivering that comedy line, Barber, who is described in his HuffPo bio as a "democratic theorist" who authored a book (ranked #254,970 on Amazon) with the long winded title of  "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole," provides us with a bunch of other laughs in his blog (emphasis mine):

It seems forever since the Democrats completed their triumphant Convention in Denver with its Obama/Biden/Clinton/Kennedy unity ticket and its intoxicating sense of take-it-to-the-finish line momentum. What happened? Not Sarah Palin. How could a small-time Alaska mayor and first term Governor derail the Obama freight train? No it was not Sarah Palin but the extraordinary reaction to McCain's wildly irresponsible decision to make her his running mate that seems to have paralyzed the Party.