No, I think there were of course several reasons why Palin was chosen, but those reasons wouldn't have been enough to overcome her lack of experience in the past. Now they were. And before you start, yes, some of those reasons are similar to the reasons why Obama won the Democratic nomination - charisma, being able to motivate people, and the like. In the past, there are examples of popular people without much experience actually becoming president - Ulysses Grant comes to mind - but for such people to be *selected* (rather than elected like a presidential candidate) as VP candidates is a more recent thing.

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the left has had an unpleasant surprise after what they thought was an anomalous presidency, Bush's, instead turned out to be part of a trend. Bush's ultra-narrow election victory in 2000 was of course a dramatic event that would have been polarizing in the best of circumstances, and 9/11 and other events kept the polarization going - wars have a way of doing that. So I think a lot of people expected things to be somewhat calmer under Obama - not that Republicans would love him or that he'd magically make everyone more bipartisan, but that he'd be a less polarizing president than Bush, considering his election victory was a clear one. Instead, the polarization has only grown sharper, and the trends started under Bush or even Clinton have continued full speed.

No, in the sense that it's not just about the left. Despite Bush's very narrow victory in 2000, the rhetoric and atmosphere in the beginning of his presidency was not this bad. Things *are* getting worse, and if they continue to do so much longer, ugly things will happen. The left has of course benefited from this kind of ugly politics in the past, as a Republican was president for the past eight years when these things started exacerbating rapidly, so then a lot of it was aimed at him. But it would be a serious mistake to dismiss the warnings of Friedman and others now as nothing more than left-wing whining about getting back what they dished out. This atmosphere is a threat to the entire political system in the long run, not just to president Obama or the Democratic party. As I've already mentioned in another post in this thread, I give credit where credit is due to those who have done their part in countering this atmosphere, with Senator Graham as an example. But it's going to take more than that.

That idiotic claim that you keep making even though you know it's wrong - knew it was wrong even before that one thread in which I discovered what Pelosi had really said and pointed out how nonsensical your claim really was - is really not helping your credibility, or your ability to take the high ground and demand signs of goodwill from leftwing politicians.

And you will notice that Friedman wasn't pointing fingers at any one side or politician, and pointed out that this is a phenomenon going back 20 years, even if it's getting gradually worse, and even if many on the left were partially blinded to how bad it has gotten by their belief that Bush was an anomaly, that it was possible to calm down a bit with the next president.