Palin is moron. She attended SIX different colleges in five years. She had a BA in 'communications' 
and yet was never on a single school paper. A decade ago she was on the city council in some backwater town, whereas at that time President Obama had already served 2 years in state government in a state with the third largest US city and a large rural population. Palin is just as crocked as any other pol. Taking the money for the bridge to nowhere, never giving in back and touting THAT as an achievement. She sells her plane on Ebay for a loss and this is who you want running the country in our economic crisis should McCain have died (and at his age, that is what made her such an issue.)
As for you laughable conspiracy theories about President Obama's academic career, one doesn't graduate with doctorate from Harvard magna cum laude and obtain the position of president of the Harvard Law Review with questionable marks. He was also a lawyer and university professor for a decade before his political career, Palin was a sports reporter.
If you want to say the dozen people I know (all of whom voted for Bush even in 2004,) all of whom voted for Obama now (and everyone of which did so because Palin scared the shit out of them) are not 'real republicans,' then I say to you that THEY are in fact the real republicans, you Palin supporters are the religious zealots that have usurped their party.
So back to the OP, you gained not a single vote with your fundamentalist VP choice but lost uncountable votes of the fiscal conservatives and moderates that would have voted for McCain if he had made a better choice. Also the campaign was divisive. Now FYI, I have never in my life identified myself as a democrat (although that is how I tend to vote) I most certainly find fault with that party as well for being spineless cowards, which I suppose is one thing we can all agree on. 
Palin is moron? Please.
Obama graduated with "doctorate" from Harvard. Yep, Juris Doctor, which used to be LLB, as in Bachelor Letters of Law, translated. It means he got a professional degree, a law degree. It's what EVERY law school in America gives.
And, BTW, given that Obama and Harvard have not released his records, none of us, including the Obama-defending/Palin-bashing respondent, actually know whether he graduated with highest honors, or honors at all. Until he proves it, until she proves it, all we can assume, must assume, is that he did graduate from HLS.
BTW: Should this respondent attempt to work for Uncle Sugar, she would have to present a transcript of her collegiate career, if she had one. Seems only reasonable that the head of all the federal government should be required to do the same.
But, enough, for this tar baby, whatever her name is.
Minds like hers are snapped shut, so tightly that nothing can penetrate its bias, its misogynist, fraidy-cat, jealous-of-Palin, lack-of-proportion mind.
One last thing, though: Do you notice how she and the defenders of Obama always talk about the population of the state in which he was a legislator, and how they put down Wassila as a "back water" town?
They forget, of course, politician Bill Clinton. But, wait, he was a governor, wasn't he of what some might consider -- or even considered back when the Democrat Party actually vetted its presidential candidates -- a backwater state? I mean no offense to Arkansans, mind you -- I live in a state that the Obama-supporting, Palin-bashing respondent would definitely call "backwater" and in a town she'd call the same -- but I do recall that there was concern among the Democrat powers-that-were when he surfaced about that.
Regardless, I guess now, though, if you're in the lower 48, that's OK.
And, best I remember, tiny Delaware from whence Joe Biden comes is only a couple of hundred thousand bigger in population than Alaska. Guess that the nearly 900,000 population in Delaware is the cutoff for being in a state that can qualify someone for national office?
And Palin being commander of the Alaska National Guard? Negotiating with Canada on that trans-Canada pipeline nd succeeding in getting that $40-billion-or-so largest infrastructure project in North America? Getting the petroleum-refining-and-marketing companies to yield to her demands?
Yes, Obama voting present in the Illinois legislator and advancing the death of unborn and just-born children is the equivalent--if you're a close-minded Democrat, liberal and leftist who cannot find any other thing, any other experience about which to advance for Obama's qualifications.
Face it: Miss Whatever's constipated intellectually, and neither heaven or earth will unplug those obstructed mental and emotional feces.
Too bad. Passion like hers could be used to such good, unlike its waste now.
Oops. One more thing: Why do the Democrats, liberals and lefists, men and women alike -- and it does seem to be more prevalent amongst those who identify, through insinuation or not, of being urbanites or suburbanites -- fear Sarah Palin so?
Why did they make such a ruckus about her on the ticket, when McCain was the presidential candidate?
They didn't even have the wherewithal to know against whom they were running, it appeared.
And they expect sane people to believe them or their political philosophy?
