I sure is looking like Barack Obama's going to be the next president, and I'd wager that John McCain's decision to pick a know-nothing beauty queen as his running mate will be seen as a bad move in retrospect, doggone it. This leaves two jobs undone for the American Left. The first is to push to the finish line on this year's competitive congressional races -- particularly the Senate campaigns in Minnesota, Mississippi, Oregon and North Carolina. The second is to destroy Sarah Palin.

Think about where this woman has been and where she will go after the election. Until the last few days of August, no one outside of Alaska and a slim band of right-wing crazies had heard of her. She got about a week in the spotlight, a couple weeks in hiding, and then a couple of the worst weeks any candidate has ever had. Now that the VP debate has passed, she probably won't come up for much air for the rest of the campaign. Then what? Her first priority will be surviving Troopergate; then is will be re-election in 2010. Meanwhile, President Obama is going to inherit the worst conditions of anybody since Carter, and maybe FDR. I think it's just about dead certain that Palin -- assuming she gets through the next couple years -- will run for the GOP nomination in 2012. She remains popular in crazy baseland -- Rich Lowry all but said her debate performance made him hard -- and when she re-emerges in the summer of 2011, she'll have spent three years preparing for the campaign. She'll have name recognition and base popularity, and she won't sound like a high-school drop-out anymore. No one will remember much about her five weeks in the public eye in 2008, except that the 2012 version doesn't look like the stories they're hearing.

The thing is, she won't be any more prepared to be president. She won't be any smarter, more curious or more engaged with the issues. She will be just as dangerous. She may also be more appealing to the core of the Republican party than Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty. What we need to understand is that destroying her now is the only sure way to keep this from happening. Hammer McCain too, of course, but hammer him also through her.