http://darkush.blogspot.com/2008/10/making-history.html

Making History?
Steven Barnes


Will someone with more of a sense of political history than I possess please falsify the following statement, if possible: "the GOP has given us the first-ever Presidential/Vice Presidential slate with one member adjudicated guilty of a severe ethics violation and the other formally accused of a severe ethics/law violation. "


With the crowds at McCain's rallies yelling for blood, when he (thankfully) finally admonished them to be sane, saying that they had nothing to fear from Obama, he was BOOED by his own people. Shows the ugliness that he and Palin had been stoking...but I have to give him credit for backing away from the edge of THAT abyss. There is something uglier here than Clinton's stoking of her followers, and how she seemed to realize in the final days that she may have pushed things to the point that it would be difficult for the Democrats to pull together to beat the Republicans.

In the same way, I think that cooler heads are whispering to McCain that he is raising the possibility of actual violence, and, if he loses, that the Republican base might be so angry and frightened that the country would be difficult to govern. A Pyrrhic victory is bad enough. But a Pyrrhic DEFEAT would be flat insane. And McCain isn't nuts. Brittle and angry, yeah. I think he's experiencing a bit of what the Clinton's felt: "how in the hell is this happening?" If ANYONE here had grasped how smart Obama is, they might have laid better plans. I really, seriously, think they underestimated him, thinking that somehow Affirmative Action had raised this naive, inexperienced but charismatic guy to the national level. They were playing checkers, he's playing chess.
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I repeat my original impression: not that this would make him a great President, but Obama is the smartest person I've seen on the national stage running for national office. Watched his latest move? A British paper says that he's offered McCain a job in his new administration.

What? I see this as multi-pronged, and I don't think there is a direct riposte:

1) It is supremely confident, at a time Americans need desperately to believe in their leaders as BOTH capable and confident.

2) It suggests he's ready to reach "across the aisle". Supposedly, the post would be a bi-partisan post on Veterans Affairs.

3) IF McCain DOESN'T reciprocate in some way, independant voters may think that he is ingracious. If he DOES, then it undercuts his argument that Obama can't be trusted.
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Note the way he dared McCain to call him a terrorist sympathizer to his face? In all likelihood, McCain hasn't been looking him in the eye as an attempt to keep his temper under control. (Ah...if this is true, is there anyone out there who thinks this is a valid strategy for a chief executive or a diplomat..?) So he is tempting McCain into a trap. First, Obama has far more emotional control. Second, he has an answer up his sleeve that will be HARSH, designed to both rebut and trigger an outburst. Watching McCain wandering around the stage...I regretfully conclude that he is on the borderline of losing some control factors. I would say that his best days are not in front of him, and it is sad to watch.

Palin? I cannot begin to imagine her on "Meet The Press" or any kind of remotely antagonistic forum. McCain, Obama, and Biden would survive such grilling without a sweat. Does anyone out there think she would have been chosen if she weren't pretty? I think McCain thought she'd give America a chubby.

What a fascinating, fascinating election this has been. And it ain't over yet.

Best case? McCain tones down the rhetoric, sharpens his message, and runs a campaign more in alignment with his stated values. He either wins, or loses, with honor.

Worst case? I don't even want to go there. But I have never heard more violent rhetoric in a Presidential campaign. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention?

For those of you who heard Fox News referring to "Obama's Baby Mama" and speculating about assassination, and heard the crowds spouting venom while Palin and McCain stoked the fires...if you weren't repelled, if you didn't automatically demand more from your candidate or network of choice...what would you say to yourself if an actual violent incident occurred. "Oh well?" "I didn't realize..?" "Thank goodness!"

I would bet that the proportion of the population that considers this acceptable political discourse overlaps remarkably with that percentage that has negative views of black people to begin with.

I have a theory that I'm calling the "Obama Effect" that suggests that there is a threshold beyond which his race could actually work in his favor. It goes like this: IF it is pretty clear he's going to win anyway, I suspect that there are many, many Americans who are waffling on the borderline, and that in the voting booth, if they think Obama's going to win anyway...they may decide to vote FOR him simply for the sake of being on the right side of history. They will want to be able to say they voted for him. This might actually give him a boost over polling at the last minute, a sort of "reverse Bradley effect" created by 300 years of pressure. I can see how it might happen...once.

But it's like that guy with the refrigerator on his back in the roller skating contest: IF you can get to the top of the hill, the trip down is a little faster. But making it up the hill is a b****, and it's quite amusing to see those unencumbered ones complaining that "refrigerator guy has an unfair advantage..."

It's a particular and, to me, palely amusing form of blindness.

Notice how quickly the Republicans screamed that scrutiny of Palin was sexism? That tactic, screaming sexism, racism, ageism, whatever, is one of the first things any group does to oppress criticism. Blacks have done it plenty. Hell, Republicans claim "Liberal Bias" in the media even when their candidates are stomping butt. So the game is played across the board, but it doesn't remove the fact that there is very real sexism, racism, etc. out there. How we negotiate this ground in the 21st century will be one of our greatest tasks. How do we sort out the real complaints from the purely political posturing?

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.