Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

Recent news about Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter's pregnancy naturally caught the news' scrutinizing eye.  Despite her conservative nature, Palin's response to the situation was outwardly positive.  However, it's pretty obvious that this situation is a horrible embarrassment for someone who just signed on as the VP potential along with McCain.

As I mentioned in my previous article, McCain and the Republican's chief purpose in assigning a woman was to attract young and disillusioned voters by demonstrating that an old guy with an old party can easily change course.  Now with this latest scandal in the eyes of the media, McCain's party certainly has hit a quick stumbling block, only a few days after Palin's announcement.

However, Palin absolutely cannot drop out of this situation nor can McCain drop her.  It would make their entire campaign look weak and demonstrate that McCain and the Republican party's choices are not sound ones.  Certainly, McCain was correct in stating that the media's attention has been grossly unfair towards them.  But this is not a trivial matter as we're dealing with one of the most important elections in the history of America.  So every detail and every issue will crop up as voters truly examine the candidates moves on the chessboard.

Just over on Yahoo, I spotted Obama immediately addressing the situation as calling Palin's daughter's situation "off limits."  To me, this is Obama attempting to intercede and project a "good guy" image (whether he's sincere or not is a different story).  But naturally, he's trying to turn the situation into a plus for him by posing as someone with some morals (we're talking politicians people!).  Just like that, you're giving easy points to someone who's going to sweep up as many as he can to ensure 100% victory in November.

Yet, we're still at the beginning and about 2-3 months away.  This isn't looking hot for McCain and I think the media themselves are taking a bias against the Republican party.  Of course, we still have the electoral college to screw things up.  But at least from the overall picture, I would say Obama has some nice points over McCain just on this issue alone.