I'm Afraid

I'm willing to admit it - I'm scared of Tuesday, no matter which way the vote goes. And an article in the Pinko Times (New York Times to you Socialists who don't know its "real" name) supports my biggest fear.

In a poll of over 1300 registered voters, the numbers in terms of candidate support were about the same as most other polls (except the one posited by Bill O'Reilly, which, to be fair, has a margin of error of 101%), showing Obama with a solid lead. Those, however, are not the numbers that give me some concern about what will happen not Tuesday, but rather Wednesday:

The survey found that opinions of Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain had hardened considerably, as 9 out of 10 voters who said they had settled on a candidate said their minds were made up, and a growing number of them called it “extremely important” that their candidate win the election. Roughly half of each candidate’s supporters said they were “scared” of what the other candidate would do if elected. Just 4 percent of voters were undecided, and when they were pressed to say whom they leaned toward, the shape of the race remained essentially the same.

These are the numbers that are starting to frighten me. A growing number on both sides feel it's "extremely important" that their guy win. Everyone involved here feels that nothing less than the very future of America is at stake on Tuesday. And even if Senator Obama wins by the forecasted ten percent - a pretty substantial margin of victory - that still means that approximately 2 out of 5 people in America will likely, according to this poll, be not only disappointed, but "scared" - and possibly very, very angry.

I am concerned at this point that no matter which direction the election goes, there could be a substantial number of violent incidents during and immediately following the outcome. Perhaps never before has the country been so polarized and so deathly afraid (on both sides) of the "other guy" winning.

But there's another more sinister factor: race. Let's remove our PC rose colored glasses for a moment and be honest. If Obama wins, there is a not insubstantial percentage of the white electorate that will be despondent, terrified - and possibly violently so. If McCain pulls off the upset, I will go on record as saying it is my view that many African Americans will feel this is the ultimate outrage and paradigm of White America stealing just one more thing from the Black community - but this time, possibly the most important thing in the world. And I think many of them will feel this is their own personal breaking point.

Am I predicting race riots, a replay of Watts or Rosewood depending on the outcome? No, I don't think so. But do I see this election cycle passing without incident? No. I think we've come very far as a country. However, considering what's at stake on Tuesday, I think that no matter the outcome, some Americans of one color are going to feel the country has been hijacked by Americans of another color... and I think it is naive in the extreme to believe they will take that news absolutely peacefully.

I hope I am wrong and underestimate the American electorate. Something tells me I am not.

Baghdad John

I'm sure you all remember Baghdad Bob - Saddam's minister of disinformation turned internet sensation - proclaiming that there were no American tanks in Baghdad while the 3rd Infantry Division was rolling down Hussein Avenue. Well it seems we now have our own American version - Baghdad John. As the Palin-McCain tanks of racism are rolling down Main Street, USA, Baghdad John is telling the world that he's running a respectful campaign. Another day, another appeal to racism by the McCain campaign, and another day where Baghdad John asserts that the campaign he's running differs from the reality on the ground.

From Karen Tumulty of Time:

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.

The Frederick in the above anecdote is none other than the GOP Chairman of Virgina, Jeffrey M. Frederick. Not some low level volunteer. Not some maverick Maverick supporter spewing hate on his own time. This is the GOP Chairman of Virginia. You can email or call him here, if you so desire.

Now either John McCain is sincere in his desire to run a respectful campaign, but has no control over that campaign (disqualifying him from the presidency), or he is a bigot (disqualifying him from the presidency). And for those who bristle at the allegation that McCain is a racist, I will offer the following - if McCain doesn't want people to think he's a racist, then he should stop appealing to racism in his campaign. If McCain doesn't want people to think he's a racist, then he should stop defending his supporters that call Obama a "terrorist," a "traitor," and advocate killing him. If McCain doesn't want people to think he's racist, then he should stop looking the other way when supporter after supporter treat Obama's middle name as a pejorative term. If McCain doesn't want people to think he's a racist, then he shouldn't let his campaign Co-Chair - his campaign Co-Chair - call Obama "a guy of the street" and insinuate that he was a drug dealer. If McCain doesn't want people to think he's a racist, then he shouldn't unleash his running mate to incite rage and xenophobia resulting in racial outbursts towards the closest black person in the room. If McCain doesn't want people to think he's racist, then he shouldn't allow the invocation at a Palin-McCain rally to explicitly call for a defeat of the Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim people praying for Obama. If McCain doesn't want people to think he's a racist, then he shouldn't allow his supporters to send letters from Republican headquarters stating that "Obama is an Arab."

If McCain doesn't want people to think he's a racist, then he should stop his campaign from saying racist shit. And if Baghdad John doesn't want to become the joke that Baghdad Bob is, then he better start facing reality instead of creating his own.

They're Trying to Kill Him

Accuse him of palling around with terrorists? Check
Say he doesn't see America the way that ordinary Americans do? Check
Claim he is - hint, hint - from the street? Check
Insinuate that his campaign is funded by foreign terrorists? Check
Stoke the fires of hatred and racism? Check
Invoke cries of "terrorist!" and "traitor!"? Check
Look the other way when a supporter advocates murder? Check
Defend those views as coming from "ordinary Americans?" Check
Taking it a step further and actually accusing Obama of attacking those same violent, enraged nutjobs? Holy shit, check

McCain has gone too far. Will an adult please step in before one of these wackjobs takes the obvious cues being given by McCain and "puts country first" by trying to take Obama out? Really.

MSNBC:

McCain camp defends the behavior?
Posted: Friday, October 10, 2008 3:30 PM by Mark MurrayFiled Under: 2008, McCain
From NBC's Mark MurrayEarlier today, Obama remarked on recent outbursts of "Traitor!" "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at McCain campaign events. "It's easy to rile up a crowd," Obama said. "Nothing's easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States."

In response, McCain senior adviser Nicolle Wallace released this statement, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports. "Barack Obama's assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising. These are the same people obama called 'bitter' and attacked for 'clinging to guns' and faith. He fails to understand that people are angry at corrupt practices in Washington and Wall Street and he fails to understand that America's working families are not 'clinging' to anything other than the sincere hope that Washington will be reformed from top to bottom."

"Attacking our supporters is a new low for the campaign that's run more millions of dollars of negative ads than any other in history."

*** UPDATE *** McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers adds in another statement: “Barack Obama’s attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo."

Dem Democrat "Hooligans"

"I am madder than a old wet hen. Let me translate dat der jumble-o-words I just dropped on yah, McCain: I ain't happy as a pig in slog no more. Even dem lipstick pig variety and such. Get dem commie bastards, Pelosi, the lot of em, and that uppity boy Obama. Get him good!"

Get them, Johnny. Go get them!!!! Burst through that door and hack'em up!!!!!

Nothing is more Americana then an ol' country kook cleaning the crust from his mouth, rattling his partisan chains around like Jacob Marley, calling the Democrats "hooligans" and "socialists," atavistically referring to "an Obama" like he's subhuman for having a feasible health care plan, then starting a hackneyed "U.S.A . . . U.S.A." chant just in case you thought McCain was hosting a tea party in Paris.

And the curmudgeon's incendiary red glare, an octogenarians head full of air! Francis Scott Key was the original Toby Keith. Yippeee! U.S.A! Obama is a muslim, terrorist, radical! Kill darky! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

The gap is shrinking between embellishment and what my eyes perceive. That's frightening.

Whether it's Dennis Miller deranged bellicosity on the O'Reilly Factor, looking into the camera and screaming at McCain to "fight, John. Fight!!!" or Michelle Malkin making the case for her own internment because she can't live under a Democratic administration, the Republican Party is fraying at the base (or is it a Socialist administration as the next bucket of radical paint is dumped on Barack Obama for tomorrow's news cycle).

There are many revealing moments in the short video of Waukesha, Wisconsin apoplexy! A complete lack of respect for McCain, the rampaging codger giving the "maverick" senator the business and telling him in campaign speak to "shut his piehole" (ie, "Let me finish, please"). The imbecilic dissonance of two sequential sentences, one saying "and I'm not mad about the economy," the very next sentence shrieking I'm mad "about the socialists taking over our country."

Socialism (as defined by Merriam Webster): Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Hey Wilford Brimley - you're mad at the economy, you f**king wingnut, or at least you will be when they repossess your PT Cruiser, they take your job away greeting at the Wall-Mart and disabuse you of your last five dollars because the church needed it! It's the Christian thing to do.

What's the use. There is an exorbitant premium on making sense within conservative dens during the last throes of what Karl Rove touted "50 years of Republican domination."

I found McCain's instinctual response to the surly fella even more fascinating. It's almost like he's uncomfortable consorting with these vitriolic crackers demanding a political lynching of Obama. "Act together because all of us are Americans first." All of us. And McCain will "work with anyone" and "work together as one nation indivisible."

But the ideological dummies, clod fanatics of neo-conservatism on the wan and firebrand zealots waving their bibles wildy don't want bipartisanship, cooperation or even the "maverick" persona McCain and Palin shill.

They want leftist blood. They want to murder liberalism. They have no idea why. The rhetoric is a hodge-podge of hate, fear, insecurity, a dollup of subconscious racism (a bigger helping for some folks) and confusion. They cannot formulate sentences to express this madness. It's a venomous melange of terrorism, communism, socialism, radicalism, liberalism, nihilism and any other "ism" reduced and muddled into formless chimeras haunting the good neighbors on Main Street, Mayberry as they slumber.

It's a request for grotesque and unseemly tactics that John McCain may not fulfill - for two reasons:

One, a political view, that this election is not won by preaching to the converted at Republican rallies, but by appealing to the whopping 40% of the electorate that consider themselves independent, many of them rational thinkers, unfettered by party talking points.

And two, a moral view (really, an American view): that I will not spark a match and set this country ablaze when the blood in my veins pulses with doing the right, but sometimes unpopular thing and working with members of both parties if that's what it takes to accomplish it.

How ironic: McCain might lose this election because he truly does put "country first." As dirty as it's getting, McCain may not be willing to cross every line, only most of them. And that will come up short.

Obama Must Answer For Ayers, Then McCain Should Apologize To America

From Andrew Sullivan and his political blog, The Daily Dish at The Atlantic:

"The far right is obsessed with the question of Bill Ayers, much more obsessed than with the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or the Palin farce or the financial meltdown. Their obsession is unseemly but it is not, alas, without any basis in truth. I find Bill Ayers' refusal to disown his use of political violence in the 1960s to be repulsive. If I were forced to meet him, I would not shake his hand. Obama's fault, however, is not being a terrorist sympathizer, as Palin absurdly declares to mob cheers. Obama's fault is in being a go-along-to-get-along Hyde Park liberal. You can see why he made the decision not to wreck polite liberal society in Chicago by calling out these former thugs. But I do not admire him for it. It's a corner he cut. He deserves to be criticized for it - if not in the fascistic way Hannity does it.But the question of association raises broader questions."

Fair point by Sullivan. I too deem Obama's association with William Ayers worthy of discussion and in season - not because by hypothetical syllogism Obama approves of terrorism and violent means of protest (ie., Obama is to Ayers, Ayers is to terrorism = Obama is to terrorism), but as a reasonable question of his judgment as a public servant. It isn't guilt by association, but uncertainty by association. There would be no tenable smoke here if Ayers had peacefully protested and railed against the sixties establishment, or took it as far as non-violent civil disobedience. However, he made bombs and detonated them. That's terrorism by any definition and Obama shook the guy's hand, unwittingly in the beginning perhaps, but then with a full understanding and appreciation of Ayer's nihilistic past. Obama's surrogates must do more than mewl "smear tactics" and clumsily attempt to dismiss the connection out-of-hand (the "40 years ago and I was eight when Ayers committed these despicable acts" is almost Palinesque in its fumbling diversion).

Notwithstanding the Democratic dance here, the premediated methodology by which McCain-Palin uses the Ayers-Obama connection is the most abhorrent aspect to all this back-and-forth partisan rancor: Simply to engendered hatred/fear of Obama as a radical, a terrorist sympathizer, a dangerous appeaser of leftist criminal syndicalism and anarchy, or, hell, maybe even a "suspicious black fella" (whatever shoe fits for McCain to help undecideds make the "right" decision on November 4). This is dirty pool (or politics as a "tough business" as McCain offered on The View) and jettisons from the realm of legitimate political discourse. It's nothing more then slimy "politics as usual" in an election cycle climaxing in expected baseness.

posted by Warm Apple Pie