The Ugly Train Express

First off, credit where credit is due. Kudos to some of the very reasonable, respectable McCain supporters (the kind he might have had more of, were it not for his catastrophic -- to his campaign -- choice of Sarah Palin as VP running mate) who take on (and drive off) the racist rightwingers who showed up with their printed hate:



If we all make it through this campaign and Obama is elected, there's a place at the table for these non-hating McCain voters. However, the candidacy of Barack Obama is bringing to light the ugly side of America, the side most Americans hope is behind us. Maybe it's hate that's not just tied to race but to political belief, but what grown up really believes that. Racism gives it the vicious, lethal kick.

How long until an anti-Obama instigated fatality? There are already death threats to average citizens for supporting him:

A 74-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man with Obama signs in their front yards near the 600 block of South Villa Avenue received similar letters that had a Villa Park Village Hall return address. "Get the Obama signs off your property—now," the letter reads. "Failure to obey this order will result in the immediate death of all family members." Both residents said they will not remove their signs, though the man, who had voted Republican for 25 years before switching parties this year, said his wife is worried about letting their 7-year-old son play alone outside.

There's auto vandalism to Obama supporters in North Carolina:

Authorities say someone slashed tires on at least 30 parked vehicles while their owners were attending a Barack Obama rally in a North Carolina coliseum.

The tires were cut Sunday outside Fayetteville's Crown Coliseum, The Fayetteville Observer reported Monday.

And Texas:

My "Obama 08" bumper sticker was torn off the right rear bumper, a 20-lb rock was dropped through the back window, 2 stolen Obama yard signs were shoved through the gaping hole in the window, and a cryptic almost "OBAHA" (or something...) was scrawled in orange spray-paint on the drivers side front and back doors and windows.

Campaign sign replacement with the flag of slavery:

On Friday night, a large Obama sign was stolen on Bailey Bridge Road. It was replaced with something that has shocked the community.

In the sign's place was a confederate flag.

"I was kind of upset and shook up," said Reverend Leroy McLaughlin, the signs owner.

Some McCainiacs are openly trying to intimidate likely Obama voters:

Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.

Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.

As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.

And some McCainiacs are getting physical:

In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.

“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”

As far as political murder goes, do bears count?:

Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police.

“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said.

And thanks to McCain/Palin anti-ACORN smear rhetoric:

Earlier Friday, ACORN told McClatchy that one of its senior staffers in Cleveland had received a death threat and that its Boston and Seattle offices had been vandalized sometime Thursday, reflecting the mounting tensions over the group's role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote...

...Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended." A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said...

...Separately, vandals broke into the group's Boston and Seattle offices and stole computers, Kettenring said.

The incidents came the day after McCain charged in the final presidential debate that ACORN's voter-registration drive "may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and may be "destroying the fabric of democracy."

Here's the scoop: it may be too late for McCain to save his reputation, and no matter what she says to try and cover her ass, Palin doesn't care -- this is her base. It's already on them. It's already on John McCain. Barack Obama -- and Joe Biden -- is running a campaign of inclusion. McCain is betting on division and his rhetoric for the past several weeks, as if taking a lead from his running mate, has centered on this in lieu of actual vision or statesmanship.

This appeal to division and, yes, racism, is going to be his last Hail Mary drive to squeak an Electoral College victory by focusing on (Western) Pennsylvania.

And, at this point, should a single Obama supporter lose their life to a McCain supporter, it will damn him -- and Governor Palin -- for eternity.

Sixteen Days

That's all that's left until November 4th, and today a few good things happened for the Obama campaign. He received Colin Powell's endorsement, he announced raising an earth-shattering $150,000,000 in September at an $86/contribution average and including over 600,000 new donors, and he had my eldest son on the phone here in Santa Monica calling Obama voters in North Carolina to urge their early voting and provide an 888 number for them to find out the One Stop Early Vote polling place nearest to them.

The Powell endorsement is incredibly sober, truly what Prof. Juan Cole (who's criticized Powell for his role, however neutered, in the Iraq War build-up) calls "Powell's Finest Moment." If you want to see it and haven't yet, here you go:



Powell undermines every argument for a McCain Presidency, including all the contradictory Ayers posturing. He was even harsher talking with reporters outside after the on-air, especially on the vile McCarthyite Congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann. (More on her shortly.) But one of the earmarks of this election is that the racists are making themselves known, specifically today Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan who both insult the hell out of Former General, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, and Secretary of State Powell by saying he only endorsed Obama because of their shared skin color.

Disgusting. Like McCain's new red-baiting strategy, drinking from the same filthy trough as Palin and Bachmann. And his level of rhetorical self-delusion is profound -- compare this two-faced defense of smear-fest robocalls, having hired the same firm that the Bush campaign used in 2000 to ruin McCain with targeted lies:



What an incredible slime McCain has become, a kind of political Dorian Gray where in return for a hoped-for point or two poll bounce his reputation becomes uglier and uglier. And his camp is now acting in tell-tale loserish ways, banking on division to eke out a tiny victory, easy to target stuff, as Joe Biden slams home like a rock star:



You know you're losing when even your latest drummed up diversion ditches you for Mike Huckabee -- who isn't even running anymore. You know you're losing when a company doing fake voter registration and affiliation switches for your Party gets arrested for trying to subvert democracy. When yet another dyed-in-the-wool conservative newspaper endorses your opponent, in large part due to your disastrous VP choice. You know your losing when attacks on patriotism by surrogates like this:



...leads to her opponent suddenly raising $450,000 from 9,000 donors in the ensuing 24 hours. And with a name like Elwyn Tinklenberg (yes, really), that's got to be an otherwise unattainable campaign warchest.

Complacency is a killer, but Andrew Sullivan has it right that at least Obama has built a machine -- and a message -- with the shot at a rare landslide victory. There is nothing wishy-washy about Obama at all -- he's in it to win it.

As for his opponent, maybe not so much?

Holy Cow

100,000 in St. Louis Saturday.

Later in the same day, 75,000 in Kansas City.

Help be a part of history.

Le Deluge?

The debate period of the past several weeks seems to have been a pause in the campaign in a way, with candidates disappearing for a day here and there to prepare for the debates, where a certain vetting went on.

That's all changing, as we've emerged into the final Act, less than three weeks to go, three Tuesdays from now. And while there's plenty of healthy fear of complacency, sudden GOP activation or hidden anti-Obama voting out there, we may also begin to witness the long-planned for flood. Starting with endorsements, maybe or maybe not including Colin Powell on Sunday, but with newspapers already weighing in, including some surprises.

For one, The Los Angeles Times rarely endorses a Presidential candidate in the General Election:

The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president.

Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.

Without hesitation. They go on to how the McCain they once admired is no longer recognizable, and give large consideration to how his VP choice undermines any claim of superior judgment. And their closing paragraph is moving in a patriotic way:

We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama's critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

More stunningly, the Chicago Tribune gives their first-ever endorsement of a Democratic Presidential candidate:

On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.

The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States...

...Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them.

We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.

They go on to recall how the newspaper's first great leader was a Republican Party founder (anti-slavery), how the current GOP has completely lost its way, how McCain is no longer comprehensible and, again, there's that Palin:

McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate--but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin's exposure to the public. But it's clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment's notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.

Obama chose a more experienced and more thoughtful running mate--he put governing before politicking. Sen. Joe Biden doesn't bring many votes to Obama, but he would help him from day one to lead the country.

Country first, baby. Could be Obama's new slogan.

They go into more detail on Obama's reassuring past successes in Illinois legislature, and then close with this rather tear-provoking passage:

Obama is deeply grounded in the best aspirations of this country, and we need to return to those aspirations. He has had the character and the will to achieve great things despite the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S.

He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions.

When Obama said at the 2004 Democratic Convention that we weren't a nation of red states and blue states, he spoke of union the way Abraham Lincoln did.

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation's most powerful office, he will prove it wasn't so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

Again, no chickens before hatching time, but should a tall dark gentleman from Illinois fulfill the promise of an earlier under-experience, eloquent, tall thin President from Illinois...well, what an epic story that would be.

The next several weeks are crucial for America renewal, for making good on everything we like to say about ourselves, our good will, our strong backs and elbow grease, the miracle of a nation of many peoples united as in no other country in history.

If these editorials keep coming, if the early voting continues to look so strong for Obama, if a sense of a winner actually encourages more voting rather than complacency (after all, would you want your state to be left out when the new President looks to help those who helped elect him?), then we could see the deluge some dare not even imagine.

If you believe, then the time is now -- not November 5th or 6th or 7th -- to join the party.

Now is the time to come pitch in.

McScrew-up

McCain goes hat-in-hand to Letterman. It's nice to see him admit a mistake. Twice. But he is so freaked out, you just can't imagine Obama acting like that, let alone getting himself into the situation in the first place. Note that the admission of screwing up is a bid for absolution, not a real admission that he screwed up by lying to Letterman. One doubts Obama would lie, at least so brazenly, or wouldn't have been on Katie Couric to run interference with a running mate he can't trust alone with a network news anchor.

Obama was right today, anyone who thinks it's okay to get complacent doesn't remember New Hampshire. However, I'm still thinking of last night's third and final Presidential debate, and how much it felt like we were watching the climax of John McCain's nervous breakdown. Pictures like these (oh especially that now-famous last one with his tongue hanging out in reptilian pose) don't help. But it's more like George Packer nails it in The New Yorker:

It made me sad, watching the tight-necked, pop-eyed, clenched-jawed, eyebrows-twitching, shoulders-heaving, ghoulish-smiling, rapid-blinking John McCain go from pale to translucent as he flailed away on TV last night, to remember the man I saw at a town-hall meeting in Salem, New Hampshire, last January—years ago. Back then he was witty, he was relaxed, he was appealingly combative, he was generous. For sheer talent at engaging with voters he had it all over both Obama and Clinton. The contrast now is so severe that it makes running for President seem like a personal disaster on the scale of a prolonged nervous breakdown leading to physical and psychological ruin. This campaign has done something terrible to McCain. And it’s entirely his own fault. Character is fate.

While Obama understood what he needed to do in the debates and delivered with profoundly together coolness, per Mark Kleiman (per David Gergen):

David Gergen made the most important point of the evening, one that related to all three debates and one that, I thought, Obama grasped and McCain didn't. These were only formally and secondarily clashes between Obama and McCain. The voters weren't really measuring them against each other. These debates were the final step in Barack Obama's job interview for the Presidency.

The voters (like those in 1980, as Ed Rollins pointed out yesterday) had already decided they'd had about enough of the ruling party. But they needed to be reassured that the opposition candidate wasn't a fool, a lightweight, or a kook. What mattered was whether the challenger could get above the bar, put himself in the voters' comfort zone. Once that happened, there was sure to be a landslide.

Obama's super-controlled performances were all aimed at that end. Unlike his opponent, he knows deep in his bones the difference between tactics and strategy.

Tonight Obama and McCain met again at the traditional Al Smith formal dinner in NYC, a big Catholic establishment event, as Al Smith was a failed 1920's Democratic Presidential candidate, smeared due to his then-unaccepted Catholicism. It's a foundation dinner as well, and the candidates are supposed to let down their hair with written comedic monologues that singe but don't burn, usually climaxing with a tribute to the other candidate, who's sitting right there at the dais table. This is the dinner where Al Gore was specifically not gracious about his opponent while then-Gov. Bush spoke kindly of Al as a family man, feeding into the Gore cold elitism disdain meme. So it's weird to watch McCain and then Obama speak in such a collegial setting, getting digs in but also honoring each other. I have to say that if McCain wins he'll be the most surprised guy in America, because you can see the acceptance, the this-side-of-tears resignation written all over his face.

It feels like he wants Obama to be his President. And it would certainly spare him the humiliation of his own first term. By the time this is over, he's going to be grateful to his opponent for winning, or maybe for winning in the honorable way he's on track to do.

But until then, you'll find John's navigating the gutter.

Mean-ingless

Did anyone watch this final debate? I guess I'll find out when the ratings are released. I almost didn't and I have TiVo. I'm not getting the customary flurry of emails and voicemails tonight. Nobody cares like they did on the first three (including Joe Biden's trip to the Sarah Palin freakshow). But I've got it on now.

Why does McCain (like Palin) come in and write down a bunch of notes as soon as he arrives? Makes him seem disengaged when Bob welcomes them. Gotta hit this, gotta make sure to hit that. Real spontaneous.

What's the deal with McCain's eyebrows? They required more grooming. They are distracting me from what begins as his most sober opening so far. I take issue with his "our beloved Nancy Reagan" although I think it appropriate to note her accident and send best wishes, as an ex-First Lady. But he's looking strangely like an amped up version of Bob Novak, and when asked if he has a question for Sen. Obama after Barack's first answer, on the economy, he says, "Uh, no," and launches into something while Barack kinda laughs like, "That's John." Yet another one of his twists on "angry."

Is McCain on some kind of uppers? He whirlpools into "Joe the Plumber" and the CNN audience meter flatlines for a longer stretch than I remember even from the last debate. I swear, he's taking some sort of age or cancer or pain-related drug, or maybe something like the Dr. Feelgood shot Don Draper turned down on Mad Men this week. I mean, this is the clip of the debate, and he doesn't even say anything:



McCain saying "Okay? Okay?" like he's Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. Here, too:



And even better:



Barring catastrophe, it's over. This debate can be studied as a McCain freakout under a microscope, and it's his best performance yet.

He just scares the shit out of everybody now. He didn't in the primaries, even with the revealing "Bomb-bomb-bomb Iran" type jokes, but when he picked Sarah Palin he revealed his true character, and it's one unsuited to the Office of U.S. President. McCain may have grown up thinking he was cool because he was a poor-little-rich-military kid rebel, but self-centered the same way that George W. Bush was and is, maybe not to the same degree.

The last undecideds who can be persuaded are overwhelmingly falling to Barack Obama. It's brutal:

CBS poll of undecided voters:

Who won the debate?

McCain (R) 22
Obama (D) 53

Shares your values

Obama, Before the debate: 54
Obama, After the debate: 63

McCain, Before the debate: 53
McCain, After the debate: 56

Update: CNN poll of voters who watched debate:

Who won the debate?

McCain (R) 31
Obama (D) 58

Favorable/Unfavorable

Obama, before debate: 63/35
Obama, after debate: 66/33

McCain, before debate: 51/45
McCain, after debate: 49/49

McCain is actually less popular now than he was at 9:00pm ET. His favorables have sunk to exact parity with his unfavorables. While Obama grew to am all-time high favorable score exactly double that of his unfavorable.

Is it possible that McCain only gets, like, @ 57 electoral votes (to an Obama 481), i.e. eleven states and not Texas?

Is it?

Bonus Post: Debate Prediction

Here you go -- if I'm wrong, there's always post deletion:

I don't really care what McCain does tonight, except in that scientific interest sort of way. Or maybe circus sideshow/auto accident way. And maybe he'll acquit himself well, but I'd be surprised if there's a gamechanger here, as even playing nice will be seen as more evidence of erraticism now.

I'm much more interested in the Obama strategy and execution. My guess is that he'll skillfully "close the deal" by closing the loop. And I predict he will do that by tying together the recent themes that have grown tall in his campaign -- economic rescue via jobs, shared responsibility and revived American spirit -- with his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech, the one that catapaulted him to the national stage, "The Audacity of Hope" speech, albeit tempered with the stark realities of this moment.

Back then a friend (who actually ended up a Hillary supporter) told me it was the most impressive convention speech she had ever seen, and to watch this guy as a potential Presidential candidate. I thought it was a pretty rousing speech, but my thoughts ended there. Whoops.

However, I believe we will hear a reprise in Obama's unity message tonight, which had this key passage:

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Listen for echoes of this. If he does do such a callback (in comedian parlance) it will be an epic four-year callback, with the same storytelling power of the climax to a brilliantly written movie, as well as proving he's the candidate with the most cohesive and compelling vision in years.

If I'm wrong, I'm voting for McCain.

Just kidding!!

Mc39%

O.k., maybe it isn't yet time to stop McNaming John. Kind of like McDonalds. Does that make Sarah Palin the Hamburgler?

While the 4+/- margin of error may make this CBS/NY Times poll more like Obama 49% and McCain 41%, but the fact that the morning of the final Presidential debate has the candidates at 53%-39% must be troubling for the McCain camp. It's a threshold you don't want to cross, even in an outlier. It's something you don't want bolstered with most post-debate polls. Crossing below the 40% mark, that's Bush Country.

But what if the dam really is bursting.

While the 100% negative as spend this past week polls as one reason for the drop in McCain support, clearly the biggest political mistake of this political cycle was his selection of running mate. Sarah Palin has single-handedly flipped Florida for Obama. She scares old people, especially elderly Jews.

Per Adam Nagourney, Obama eased voter doubt past the tipping point in the two debates. McCain isn't going to beat him by being nice or feisty or aggressive tonight. The die is cast. Even if he comes in jovial it'll read as erratic.

But we're also seeing the beginning of the organizational tsunami. Obama has an amazing early voting effort, which has him ahead in the pre-election day vote in New Mexico by 23 points and in Ohio by 18 points -- votes already cast.

My own experience: I volunteered for phone banking yesterday at the well-situated Democratic HQ here on Wilshire and 9th in Santa Monica. So well-organized, with some key people (mainly young women) making things work, while volunteers of all ages put in time.

The 13-year-old girl next to me got called a "dumbass" on one call, and I got one 80-year-old McCain supporter but he was respectful, and a few enthused Obama supporters. One guy told me he's voting for Obama because "McCain's too old and Palin's a dipshit!" Right on.

Mostly it was marking down "NH" for not home, but they have these call sheets with UPC's for each of the 18 targets on the list, along with age and registration. When you finish the sheets they go right to the data entry team. I used a landline, but there was one guy just trafficking cellphones (leave your driver's license) and swapping batteries. The core focus of these calls to Nevada is early voting, I'm assuming for the next few weeks. I'm guessing there's a horizon (maybe not this election) where a campaign wins before Election Day even begins. I'm betting the momentum of cast votes will almost always help whoever is ahead -- winners are magnetic, not so much perceived losers.

I got one mom on the phone who was happy to get the early voting info for her and her husband -- that's a phone number that reaches the Nevada campaign to tell you early voting places and even provides a ride(!) -- as well as absentee ballot info for her son in college back in Boston. The old (like, 78) woman next to me (and her 80+ year-old husband) was hilarious. She was a Hillary supporter who thought she'd vote Obama but not volunteer -- she and her husband both phonebanked for Kerry and were unhappy with the result -- until Sarah Palin came along! She started going to websites debunking the anti-Obama emails her friends were sending her and has grown to really like the guy.

At the other end of the age spectrum, the organizers told me that one of their very best callers is just 10-years-old.

There's a buzz going on coast-to-coast now, and Zack Exley lays it all out on HuffPo:

The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization.

Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation...This article focuses on the field program's innovative "neighborhood team" structure and the philosophy of volunteer management underlying it that is best summarized by the field campaign's ubiquitous motto: "Respect. Empower. Include."

I expect the Obama 2008 Campaign, from the first strategic plan Barack presented to Michelle in order to get her approval to run two years ago through the groundbreaking GOTV effort on Election Day, will be taught not only in political science classes but also business schools for the next 25-50 years.

And I recommend participating -- less than three weeks left to volunteer to be a part of making history.

Dick Whitman

The core question of Mad Men seems to be not so much who the hell is Don Draper -- we know he died in the Korean War, that his identity was presumed by Depression baby Dick Whitman, and that he was, per the few moments we have of him in the show, a very decent guy.

No, the core question is how Dick Whitman went from taking Don Draper's name to becoming the much admired and envied Creative Director of Sterling Cooper ad agency -- and whether that Madison Avenue man is a character that Dick Whitman can continue playing for much longer.

SPOILERS FOLLOWING.

As with the 13-episode arcs of most classic HBO dramas, the final three episodes comprise the last act of the season, and Act 3 of Season 2 of Mad Men kicked in on Sunday night with "The Jet Set". Don Draper's marriage looks to be over and between the business compromises and personal scandals infecting his office life, he grabs an opportunity for a business junket to Los Angeles. Although he's there to seduce the aerospace (jet set) industry, he's clearly disturbed by an atomic missile annihilation presentation, hearkening back to the moment when Don Draper was killed by airstrikes at their remote two-man outpost, and he swapped his dogtags for those of his superior officer. Combined with a fleeting vision of his estranged wife, Betty, and the seeming replacement of her by a young, wealthy free-spirit named Joy, Don takes up her offer of "Why would you deny yourself something you want?" and jumps in her convertible going AWOL to Palm Springs -- to be adopted into the jetset world of the idle rich.

Stripped of his own clothes, his ties to family and Sterling Cooper, floating with the topless Joy in a pool while another couple makes love downcurrent, Don has a momentary identification with an unhappy young boy dragged along by his divorcee father, muses on a crack in a glass, gives up even his bed in this house and awakens virtually naked on the couch the next morning, taking the moment when Joy goes off to pull close the rotary phone, dial a number out of his address book and intone the first tease of the big backstory payoff we've been waiting for all season:

"Hello, it's Dick Whitman."

The person on the other end gives him an address to scribble down, the camera switches to behind Don in a mirror image of the opening title silhouette image (also echoed by the first shot of Don in this episode standing overdressed staring out at his Los Angeles hotel pool), and we cut to his missing baggage being delivered to his Westchester doorstep.

Don's cut loose. Now Dick can return.

There have been two references this season to the person I believe Dick will visit in the next episode, along with a throwaway mention of his father's name after punching out obnoxious comedian Jimmy in a secret NYC gambling club several episodes back. The first was a mysterious addressee to whom Don sent his copy of Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency at the end of this season's first episode. The second was in "The Gold Violin" episode, where his consideration of a new car purchase triggered a memory in Don/Dick, of when he was selling used cars and a blond woman arrived (more Kim Novak than Grace Kelly, but a Hitchcock blonde nonetheless), who then called him out for not being Don Draper -- not being the man as advertised.

My best guess, and judging by some of the passionate online posts Monday morning I'm not alone, is that this woman is exactly who he called and is going to see. Maybe she was the real Don Draper's wife, maybe a sister. Maybe Dick Whitman got close to her; maybe she acted as a benefactor, helping him get to New York City and get his first job writing ad copy for the furrier mentioned in his brilliant Kodak Carousel pitch in the first season's final episode.

Based on the brevity of the call and Don/Dick's side of it, the person on the other end wasn't shocked to hear from him, nor did that person require much explanation. One wonders what Don may have learned from this person, what he may owe, what he may have left behind and if, for some reason to be revealed, that was o.k.

According to the "Inside Mad Men" online video for this week, this episode is all about being your true self, i.e. letting your true self come out, as reflected in Peggy's makeover, her haircutter's coming out, and Duck Dunn's renewed drinking triggering the type of bold business move he was previously known for executing:



If the theory I offered a couple months ago that this season is all about Don Draper as repressed artist, then the next two weeks could give us his opening up, a period of renewal and growth, maybe a new or newly invigorated Don Draper emerging.

After all, he is the "hero" of the show, or at least it's central protagonist. One thing we know about him is that he's a master of reinventing himself. (Not incidentally, a grand tradition of California adoptees.) We know that beneath his cool, relatively silent exterior is an intellect keenly sussing out human situations for what they really are. We know that he has the power to act decisively, for good or ill, in his Don Draper persona.

According to the chronology of U.S. history at the time of these final two episodes, there's about to be a Cuban Missile Crisis, as foreshadowed by the MIRV conference presentation that seemed to trigger something in Don. And the final episode has the same title as the Frank O'Hara book.

It's 1962 and when the series returns, if it holds to the time-scheme set up so far, it'll be 1964 with America still raw from the President John F. Kennedy assassination and Beatlemania about to sweep the world. The 1960's as most people characterize it didn't really begin until then, just as it didn't really end until maybe 1972 (Nixon's re-election) or maybe 1974 (Nixon's resignation).

So what's the "Emergency" going to refer to? Soviet missiles in Cuba? Sterling Cooper under corporate siege? Don's marriage in final crack-up?

Or the 1960's finally taking off.

Like a jet.

Disarray

With the election now 23 days away (and Bush entered into his final 100 days, if that's even imaginable), the power of the Barack Obama candidacy and campaign, combined with the collapse of the Republican brand and unsuitability of its candidate for the job, has led to a flowering of disarray within the Republican Party and the John McCain campaign itself.

There's growing criticism of the campaign from within the GOP, mainly complaints about the lack of a specific campaign message and a call (even from the always-wrong William Kristol) to drop the attack ads since they're only driving more voters to the Obama ranks. This while the Democrats coalesce, with a strong appearance by both Clintons with Joe Biden in Scranton, PA on Sunday, including a pleasing retooling of Hillary's "It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush" message to fit the Democratic Party as a whole.

Prominent Conservatives all over are breaking ranks for Obama, or choosing to sit out rather than vote for McCain, who leaks hints about a new economic plan on Saturday and then hauls that message back in on Sunday. This is a candidate who's still receiving debating tips through the media, I guess in hopes that he'll really nail that third one on Wednesday. With a campaign getting taking its negative tone from a grandiose paranoid anti-Semitic fraud, Tim Martin, exposed in The New York Times today. Is it any wonder that the mobs are being incited to such behavior when such a man is behind it?

Then there's the rumors of discord between McCain and Sarah Palin herself, i.e. with Palin doing whatever she wants, treating McCain with less respect than Obama does. (And did she get her house built as a kickback as Mayor?)

History tells us that it is unlikely that McCain can come from behind over the next three weeks and win. Obama is likely to announce September fundraising numbers this week, and with Palin driving his supporters to give, give, give, it is likely to break his August $66 million record. As Andrew Sullivan puts it, Obama is the Road Runner to McCain's Wily E. Coyote:

McCain never seemed to learn from the Clintons’ misjudgment of their rival. A key element of Obama’s strategy is classic rope-a-dope. He gets his opponents to splutter with irritation as “that one”, as McCain contemptuously described Obama in last Tuesday’s debate, glides towards them in the polls. He does his thing, raises masses of money, keeps his staff in perfect order and focuses on issues and themes. He can segue from the inspirational agent of change of the spring to the reassuring conventional pol of the autumn without anyone really noticing the seams. That takes political skill. You’ve either got it or you haven’t...

...And that’s exactly how Obama has handled McCain. Instead of attacking him frontally, he got in his head and provoked him into error. It’s easier with McCain than with the Clintons, because McCain is more volatile and more easily provoked. And so Obama cruised through August, picking a conventional running mate and punching his foreign-policy-credentials card with trips to Iraq and Europe. McCain’s response? He put out an ad equating the son of a poor single mother who made it to become president of the Harvard Law Review, a University of Chicago professor and the first black nominee for president with . . . Paris Hilton, whose only accomplishments are being born into immense wealth and making an internet porn tape.

When that didn’t work, and an unfazed Obama ran a flawless convention, calmed the Clintons and delivered one of the best acceptance speeches in modern times, McCain blew himself up with the Palin pick. His one sure-fire advantage – experience – was thrown away. His real base – independent voters and the media – was first wowed and then woke up. And as Palin became a national and international joke, as her ratings plummeted and as she lost her debate to Joe Biden (quite hard to do, given Biden’s capacity for verbal diarrhoea), McCain got even crankier and more unstable.

So, as Barack Obama hits Monday polling better than ever, one might wonder...which John McCain will we see this week?

Belief

A night to look back, as we prepare for really big changes -- no matter how Nov. 4th turns out.

On January 4th of this year I wrote "Wow." This was the night that Barack Obama won his first official voting contest of this entire Presidential cycle, the night that the Obama campaign won the Iowa Democratic Caucus and I watched his extraordinary speech, and when he opened with, "Y'know, they said this day would never come," switched my allegiance from John Edwards:



That post includes this vision of Obama vs. McCain:

Back two years ago, in February 2006, Obama reached out to fellow Senator John McCain on ethics and lobbyist reform, and got slapped down in in letter form, by what could be read as a pique of that famed McCain temper or maybe brutal political posturing with an eye to 2008, or maybe just putting the young'un in his place.

McCain calls Obama a liar more than once in the letter for wanting to do the legislation a different way. Obama's response, however, is profoundly consistent with the tone of his campaign:

For this reason, I am puzzled by your response to my recent letter. Last Wednesday morning, you called to invite me to your meeting that afternoon. I changed my schedule so I could attend the meeting. Afterwards, you thanked me several times for attending the meeting, and we left pledging to work together.

As you will recall, I told everyone present at the meeting that my caucus insisted that the consideration of any ethics reform proposal go through the regular committee process. You didn't indicate any opposition to this position at the time, and I wrote the letter to reiterate this point, as well as the fact that I thought S. 2180 should be the basis for a bipartisan solution.

I confess that I have no idea what has prompted your response. But let me assure you that I am not interested in typical partisan rhetoric or posturing. The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you nor my willingness to find a bipartisan solution to this problem.

I've heard it described as Obama taking conservatives at their word, and then hanging them by it if they play a trick. It's very above board, very good lawyerly style, and may work better than an Edwards-type us vs. them approach. Hopefully more effective, if Obama wins the big job.

But imagine this letter exchange in the context of a potential November victory for Obama head-to-head against McCain.

Shakespearean?

The difference between January 4th and October 11th is that as of this week, everyone believes that Barack Obama can be President. It's not just hope anymore. Not a lock, but no longer inconceivable in these United States.

I've written about how if Obama wins it will be because he's actually our Second black President. Dennis Haysbert -- President David Palmer -- is the model. Obama's close enough.

Most of all, I've called John McCain a litany of nasty names. Deadly John. A McCainiac who makes McStakes. McBush. McSame. McCatastrophe, McConfused, McChaos. McIncoming, McCrazy, McLurch, McAngry, McOver. McToast.

The McNasties. McDesperate. McVile. McSinner, McPussy.

Maybe it's time to stop the McNamecalling. Frank Rich lays it out -- America is getting it's pass/fail test on racism Nov 4th, but John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republican leadership have failed theirs, and any blood will be on their hands. Gov. Palin's being booed at the Flyers game in Philadelphia. A McCain supporter shows up to his rally with an Obama monkey doll. Lamely tries to conceal it when he realizes he's making YouTube.

So look back at how far we've come from the turn of the year. How far down, yep, in the economy, but with big hope slowly morphing into cautious belief, all the more with Joe Biden right there with him on your ballot.

As Obama activates what promises to be the largest and best run ground game in U.S. electoral history.

Perfect Storm

Just like I believed Obama's earth-shaking speech at the end of the Democratic National Convention, his call-out for McCain to show himself like a man, caused McCain to flinch and choose Sarah Palin as his running mate that night, so we see McCain has once again "blinked" (as Gov. Palin has admittedly trained herself not to do) and surely in response to old allies admonishing him through the media (and one assumes in private) Thursday and Friday morning, he is trying to stuff the evil genie of violent ignorance back into the bottle:



I've already had one disagreement over whether McCain is doing this out of recognized decency (note he repeats the "family man" description, reminding attendees that Obama has children to protect), I do think it's a good thing, and not only for Obama's safety. McCain is protecting his reputation, the one that follows past his death into the history books -- pure, cleansing fear. Maybe he's even angling for a role in Obama's America. The other night Michelle Obama told Larry King that should her husband win the Presidency, America will still need John McCain to join in the effort of saving our country, and maybe she and her "Team of Rivals" talkin' husband mean it.

My guess is that after Tuesday night's trouncing in the debate, it is starting to sink in with McCain that he will most likely lose on November 4th. With his wife, Cindy, has he had the "what if" conversation by now?

Yet today even as McCain does the right thing, his McCain wildly rudderless campaign lurches in to smear Michelle Obama, violating McCain's claim that families were off limits. I honestly don't know if McCain approved this one, but it sure as hell stinks of campaign managing thug Steve Schmidt, who trained at the feet of Karl Rove but doesn't seem to have an ounce of his, dare I say, finesse. After all, it was Schmidt who pushed Gov. Palin onto the ticket.

You know, the same Gov. Palin who "unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday."

Ah, more Sunday morning fodder for the commentators on the McCain circus. It's going to be TiVo-worthy.

The perfect storm includes a late-Friday rumor that the Republican National Committee is essentially pulling out of the McCain campaign -- stranding them on funding, i.e. joint TV ad money. Seems those precious resources might be better spent trying to save a House or Senate seat here or there. Plant for the future rather than throw good money after bad.

On Friday Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) wouldn't even appear with McCain at a Minnesota event. He's in a mini-scandal of his own over a lobbying buying him a trip and some suits, as Democrat Al Franken finally breaks ahead of Norm in the polls. Sweet revenge for the "accidental" death of Paul Wellstone?

A perfect storm is when the McCain campaign suddenly realizes it has to fight for West Virginia (5 electoral votes). Or (no joke!) Georgia (15 electoral votes).

That's right, you have a conventional wisdom developing that Obama could do well enough to beat McCain maybe 359 to 179 in the Electoral College, a major landslide. But I'm going to go further:

Barack Obama (D) 440
John McCain (R) 98

FDR/Herbert Hoover territory. You read it here first. The economic collapse, the endless Iraq War, the absolute failure of the Republican Party, it's all a perfect storm, to be sure, but it's not just anybody at the top of the Democratic ticket and the core reason for this landslide will be the once-in-a-lifetime leadership qualities of Barack Obama.

After all, he not only predicted the error of the Iraq War and the pending mortgage crisis, he predicted the very smear they would use against him, down to the exact wording:



Hurry, November.

McPussy

Yep, this post's title is just a little over the line, but somehow "McCoward" didn't seem to go the distance.

Beginning with the non-vetted selection of blunt object Sarah Palin as his running mate and flowering with the desperate William Ayer smear injected directly into the bloodstream of his campaign this past week, John McCain has gone from the lesser candidate to national disgrace. His entire legacy is on the line, and as USArmyParatrooper explains at MyDD, it's looking grim:

If Obama wins he will forever be ingrained in history books on a level few Presidents share, if for no other reasons because he will be the first black President.

Since we live in such a media rich age his rise to power and his roadblocks will undoubtedly be well documented and retold throughout time. Because of this John McCain is destroying his legacy on an enormously long-term basis. 200 years from now our history books will talk about Barack Hussein Obama, the first black President and the country's reaction. It will be told how his political opponent went to great lengths to portray him as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, how in McCain rallies death threats were shouted. It will be told how many on the right tried to portray him as Muslim during a time when few accepted the Muslim faith in the land of the free. It will be told how John McCain and the right questioned his patriotism and his dedication to the troops. It will be told how they even shamelessly went after his wife, Michelle Obama. As our young students learn about American history they will look back on this period thinking, "how sad." Just like we view our wrongdoings in the past with regret, so will we in the future.

Just imagine during the Jetson era young children sitting in school watching beautiful, historic and inspirational Obama speeches, and then watching John McCain and the right's ugly rhetoric. McCain has been out to make his mark in history, but I don't think he's thought about what that mark will look like. Sad indeed.

The upshot is that McCain's attacks are exceedingly cowardly, as glaringly revealed by his lack of cajones on Tuesday night in not saying any of it to Obama's face. Which the Obama campaign has clearly taken up, calling McCain out in what I assume is a totally strategic move. It started with the boss himself (thanks to TPM):



Then Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack took up the charge:



Capped by this street-level call-out by running mate Joe Biden:

“All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on YouTube and everything else,” Biden said — referring to McCain and Palin tying Obama to Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers and accusing him of “palling around with terrorists.”

“John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” he said to cheers. “In my neighborhood, you got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.“

With McCain's famous temper, this could be an attempt to draw the foul and get him to bring it up in the next debate, where Obama will be just as ready as he was with his "don't understand" killer.

Josh Marshall nails it in "The Cowardice Issue":

McCain's moral cowardice has been one of the subtexts of this campaign ever since he wound up the nomination and turned his attention to Barack Obama. But I did not realize it would reveal itself in such a physical dimension...

...He ever swaggered on for a couple days about how he was going to 'take the gloves off' when he met up with Obama in Nashville. But when the two of them were there in each others physical presence ... nothing. By a myriad of gestures and reactions Obama owned him...

...And now Obama can lightly taunt McCain with that very cowardice, his inability to just say it to his face. And if my take on the inner workings of McCain's mind at the moment is right that should simply unhinge him even more.

Or, as John Cole puts it in the vernacular:

John McCain is not man enough to own his shit. John McCain will not openly confront Obama with his smears and lies and innuendo. John McCain will not come out and talk about Ayers, he has to be asked. That is why he goes to places like Fox News, so he can be asked. What a coincidence.

John McCain is a coward.

John McCain would rather hide behind his wife and Sarah Palin than say it himself.

He would rather produce 2 minute ads that his campaign will never pay to air anywhere, and hope that the tire-swinging media will bring up the topic so he doesn’t have to do it himself.

John McCain just wants to throw shit out there, and “raise questions” about Obama, and hope his supporters connect the dots, because he is too much of a coward to directly push this toxic stew. He would rather hide behind right-wing bloggers, surrogates, and scummy websites staffed with wingnut welfare recipients like the NRO and the Weekly Standard.

John McCain had 90 minutes to bring this stuff up to Obama, to his face, and passed.

John McCain is a coward.

This is what kills Presidential candidates the most: being seen as unmanly. Fair or not, it killed Gore and it killed Kerry. And now it's the skinny intellectual from Hawaii and Harvard who's looking like a real man in this contest.

Even the mainstream media is calling bullshit on the smear-by-association:



So how long until the term "coward" starts leaking into the mainstream media itself?

I predict Sunday morning they'll be debating whether it's fair to call John McCain a coward or not. And at that point, he's lost the issue.

For good.

McSinner

There's that commandment prohibiting bearing false witness against your neighbor. For which John McCain, Sarah Palin and now Cindy McCain should all beg forgiveness from their deity, which would be today if they shared the same faith as me.

Happy Yom Kippur.

Joe Biden is telling them to repent. Campbell Brown is honestly exposing the racism of their tactics. The undecided voters are clearly telling them not to do it.

But they're stirring up their base. That's the "energy" Gov. Palin injects into the race, similarly corrupt Spiro Agnew-style. The base that just smashed windows at an Obama headquarters in Denver.

To paraphrase John McCain the night Obama cinched the nomination, "Now that's a Kristallnacht we can believe in!"

Think I'm exagerating? Then take a look at the base their inciting, the mob that McCain so desperately hired Palin to motivate, and leave a light on while you sleep tonight:



The McCain campaign says it has a newsmaker to surprise us with tomorrow morning. What new lie, smear or spurious guilt-by-association are they going to distract with this time? And distract they must -- the first official Alaska Troopergate report comes out on Friday. Oh, and McCain let slip that he's made us all prisoners (of his campaign, of his dirtiness, of his bucket list):



I just love the look on Palin's face when he calls us all prisoners. She's a mean, narcissistic, shallow but insatiably ambitious woman and every few days she thinks they might win the election, but the rest of the time knows she just has to make it alive to hopscotch over McCain's electoral corpse to a lucrative life on the Ultra-Right Tour and maybe a run at the GOP nomination in 2012, convictions-depending.

McCain spent the debate lying (repent!) about an overpriced "overhead projector" (remember those, Boomers?) that turns out to have been a planetarium projector, and making up a new late-inning economic ploy, lurching like both he and Hillary Clinton did to the desperation-reeking "gas tax holiday" back in the Primaries. Hey, as I remember, it didn't work for her (strategy, John, or haven't you learned the difference from tactics?) and this mortgage-buying jamboree tries to top the greased pander pole. Please give me a news cycle, please! pleads the wicked McCain, even as he scrambles his plan overnight and still manages to alienate fiscal Republicans.

Lurch!

So while McCain lurches from desperation rock to rock on the short road to Hades, Obama's countering with her very moving and relateable life story, like when he spoke of his mother's battle with the health insurance industry while dying of cancer, an American story.

Oh, and calling McCain out plainly as a coward for not saying his evil shit to his face Tuesday night.

Atone, McCoward. Lose with dignity. You know, put your country, not you sinning ambition, first.

Tipping Point

Peter Suderman says it best:

Obama, as always, appeared sophisticated, urbane: He held the mic in that delicate, refined way of final-level American Idol contestants, and constantly seemed to be holding an imaginary pen in the air and trying to visualize it. He will solve America’s energy crisis with telekinesis.

McCain, on the other hand, came off as less the high-toned maverick and more the self-satisfied frat-boy goof: He started several of his answers with an Igor-via-Beavis-and-Butthead chuckle: heh-heh, heh-heh. Sorry dude, not funny.

One thing that’s clear from this debate is how little there is to John McCain and his campaign. He’s running on a few, vague issues – tax cuts, an aggressive response to Russia in specific and terrorism in general, something about energy – and a whole lot of non-policy fluff: America’s inherent strength and goodness, Obama’s inexperience, scorn for Washington insiders. But mostly, he’s running on a platform anchored by a single assumption: that John McCain is inherently, singularly qualified to lead the country, and, subsequently, deserving of the office of president. McCain views the White House as something to which he is unequivocally entitled. Beyond that, nothing else matters. Indeed, if you hold this view, nothing else would.

That's it, what tonight sealed in the public's mind: McCain has no vision, no platform, no meaningful policies. McCain's I - I - I vs. Obama's we - you - us. And this isn't a lesser of two evils election: Obama has a vision and he is ready to lead.

The debate reaction numbers are ruthless. The pundits are relaxed about it now, not trying to fake equivalency, everyone (I believe) relieved that, barring any real or tragic gamechangers, we'll have someone with a real shot at saving this country in the White House in 3 1/2 months. Help will be on the way.

The McCain surrogates couldn't even spin it convincingly tonight. Some of the second string is out, one young guy who's getting his late-game field training but only saying that he thinks McCain won the debate on "substance." One wonders, is he using "substance" as a euphemism for "nothing?" Is he using "win" as a euphemism for "lost the election tonight?"

Because this is the tipping point. With McCain flatlining on the crazy CNN reacto-meter and Obama pinning the needle with women a number of times, I'm expecting to see more movement towards Obama in the polls this week.

The moment where I think Obama won the debate:



Clearly he was ready for McCain to repeat the claim that Obama "doesn't understand" but Barack delivered his response line that there's a lot he doesn't understand without sounding rehearsed. McCain walked right into the trap. Obama led, huge surprise, on the national security debate, with a little bump for McCain on Russia.

Also, McCain will be considered a wuss by hard-right Palin-loving Conservatives for not smearing Obama with the bullshit "friend of terrorist" charge. But clearly the reason he didn't is because the always strategic and prepared Obama campaign made clear this past weekend with their rapid response that if McCain brought up Ayer, he could expect a Keating rain, and spend the next five minutes trying to defend himself from that documented association.

I could go on about McCain bringing up ancient history like Ronald Reagan, calling for government to change a bunch of mortgages (anathema to Conservatives), his crazy overuse of "my friends" to the point where it's most of my 8-year-old's imitation of him, his odd jokes to himself or Tom Brokaw, the dissonant reliance on Joe Lieberman's name, the height and physicality advantage of his opponent. But the main substance of his loss is, indeed, his lack of substance.

And McCain's worst moment, if only because it's the most easily and, I expect, frequently replayable:



Fair or not, that'll be the takeaway moment from this debate. No one will watch the final debate, except maybe if you like watching accidents. Maybe it'll be McCain's final moment of surprising grace. Maybe he'll know by then that he's lost and accept it and be a good soldier for the good of the country.

We'll see.

As for his running mate, maybe she can outrun her Troopergate, get reelected or get a TV show or Ted Stevens' Senate seat and come back in 2012 to battle Mitt and whomever for the GOP Presidential nomination.

But I like this answer better.

McVile

The global financial system is melting down, John McCain is planning to cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits if he's elected President in 27 days, and as he stabilizes at around 8 pts. behind Obama in the general polls and slaughtered in the Electoral vote polls (Obama is preferred over McCain over a much wider spread of the country than any recent Presidential candidates, indeed redrawing the map), how does he sell himself to the American public?

By late-game, vicious and desperate character assassination against his opponent.

The net effect may be to dirty up Obama, or it may just boomerang back on McCain himself. But whether it decreases or increases Obama's margin over him, it threatens to permanently sully the reputations of both McCain and his ultra-enabler, Sarah Palin.

Here's why:



Per TPM:

After John McCain delivered the central question of his speech today -- "Who is the real Barack Obama?" -- the first, and loudest, supporter seems to yell:

"Terrorist!"

...McCain seemed to pause, and didn't denounce the epithet. I'd argue that there's no way to arrive at a conclusive answer as to whether he heard it or not, short of asking him and getting a frank answer. McCain could have been pausing to admire the pith and artfulness of his smear, or to bask in the adulation it brought. And McCain is not responsible for what some whackjob yells at his rally.

That said, the moment is uncomfortably revealing: McCain is now dabbling in the tactics employed in the most viral smears of Obama, if not to the same degree. No honest observer would dispute that McCain's speech today was about sowing fears of Obama as a risky, unknown, and vaguely sinister "other," and this supporter, at least, read the subtext, intended or not, loud and clear. And when McCain delivered that line there was a gratified, even visceral roar from McCain supporters, as if this attack -- fear the alien in our midst! -- was the gloves-off moment they'd been waiting for.

This is called the "Manchurean Candidate" offense, per Swampland's Michael Scherer:

You claim that you are the candidate people know, while your opponent is not who he seems to be. In fact, you argue, he has secret ulterior motives that he is trying to hide. You say he is a danger to all that the country holds dear.

The problem is that America has a history of political violence, particularly with regard to race as the ultimate other. Jerome Corsi is nosing around Kenya to try and smear Obama's father (my guess is as a Communist for having read some books as a student in 1950's Africa, like everyone else), Palin's introduced in Florida by a sheriff pointedly using Obama's middle name, a GOP columnist in Virginia is writing pure minstel show and fear-mongering racist "satire" imagining an Obama Presidency, and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania is emailing around "Obama is a Terrorist's Best Friend" (yeah, like Bill Ayres and he have been hanging out since Obama was eight).

The problem is that when they stir up fear, it stirs up hate. Per Glenn Greenwald:

And just now, John McCain -- speaking in New Mexico -- delivered one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled personality attacks a major candidate has ever delivered, blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments and depict Obama as a Manchurian candidate funded by secret Arab Terrorist sources -- a truly unstable and hate-mongering rant filled with lines like these, delivered with an angry scowl to screaming, howling, booing throngs, while Cindy McCain stood behind him shaking her head in disgust at each fact she heard about the Black Terrorist daring to challenge her husband:

I don't need any lessons in being honest with the American people, and if I did, I wouldn't seek it from a Chicago politician. . . . There's much we don't know about Senator Obama. For a guy who has authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. Who is the real Barack Obama?

It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that . . . His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign? Again, the American people deserve answers.

The problem is that it entirely encourages and leads to this:

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

When I referred to how McCain and Palin wish to leave their reputations, I didn't just mean should they lose after such vile speech, not just the choice of going rock bottom because you can't or won't or are incapable of debating the issues.

I meant should anything untoward happen to Barack Obama, any physical attack. Because if it were to happen, and if it were to be inflicted by anyone whiter than Osama Bin Laden, they'll be in a universe of boomerang pain.

Because unless they get off this tack immediately, should anything happen, the electorate, the nation and the world will hold them personally responsible.

Contest

So here's the question (and, yes, this is dangerously hubristic, but how often might we get a chance like this?):

What state will Barack Obama win that will surprise the living hell out of everybody?

Not Virginia, not now that he's consistently polling well there. Sure, he could lose there, and North Carolina, or even Ohio or Florida, but it won't be a surprise anymore if he wins all those states, because the polling supports the possibility of his winning each as we have now entered the final month.

But, assuming neither God nor McCain bring any gamechangers, it's all trending towards the winner, feeling kind of like 1932 except that Hoover's a mean, vindictive old man with a flirty young fascist at his side. Facing an eminent bloodbath, McCain has announced that he's going negative, with virtually 100% of his media spend now on smear ads. Which has given the Obama Campaign the opening to counterattack as it now appears they have been completely prepared to do -- hello again to the (Charles) Keating 5, the disgraced Senators from the hugest financial scandal to date, 1989, starring none other than the sole Republican in the gang, Greedy McFinance:



Gotta be good for a few news cycles, and a hell of a lot more relevant than the Swiftboaty smears against Obama.

So while Starburst Palin is about to get fried like moose in Alaska when seven state employees testify in her Troopergate game stopper, Obama's exposing McCain's dangerously erratic instability, using press and events in plain sight. This may be my favorite coffin nail, I mean, ad of the entire election:



So I have no prize except citing your chosen comment name, but what state will it be? Based on today's stats at Electoral-vote.com, some places where Barack is down by less than 10 points and might win, if he gets unheard of youth and out-of-the-woodwork votes, include Colorado(47/46), Missouri (48/47), Indiana (47/45) and West Virginia (50/44), but also Georgia (51/44) and Mississippi (52/44).

Oh, and my pick.

I'm betting Texas (53/43). Just because it would mean the most of all those -- 34 sweet Electoral votes and a repudiation of their very own George W. Bush.

Gimme.

McDesperate

He's going McNegative, with Winky McPalin leading the charge, bringing up the moribund accusation that Barack Obama hangs out with terrorists who don't see America as we do. She means Bill Ayers, now a respected figure in Chicago education, who did his evil deeds back when Obama was eight years old, and with whom Obama shared some brief board time. Not a close buddy.

Too bad McCain has no policies or program or vision to run on. If you want to monitor the preview of the upcoming bloodbath, check out Nate Silver or The Votemaster.

I'm looking forward to Obama's Monday morning jujutsu.

I Can't Believe It's Not BULLOCKS

Or, Never Mind the Butter:



So John Lydon, a.k.a. the great punk rock hero of the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten now thirty years ago, just got paid gobs of cash to hawk butter. The most shocking part is seeing him in a typical kitchen set. And while the ad does play off his often less-tame sense of humor, it's still a massive sell-out...or is it?

After all, the recent Sex Pistols reunion dates were called the "Filthy Lucre" tour. And their second and last album was called The Great Rock & Roll Swindle.

And what says English more definitively than such a punk icon?

I'm sure there's no "limited supply" of Country Life butter over there and expect sales to soar. It may seem "pretty vacant" of Johnny, but those are your "problems" as he's a man with a monthly mortgage to pay (here in sunny Los Angeles), not "a 12-inch squirrel."

So it's a holiday in other people's churnery. God save my toast. Cholesterol in the U.K., it's coming some time, may-be. To quote Noah Cross played by John Huston in Chinatown, "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

And now you can add once-banned rock & roll revolutionaries to that list as well.

Joe Biden

While Sarah Palin did well enough to stay on the ticket, she didn't do a damned thing to advance the "Obama is too dangerous to be President" narrative for the McCain campaign, focused much more on damage control for her own career and, as Paul Begala rightly pointed out, 2012. If McCain continues to sink in the polls, look for her to move away from him emotionally (even further) in the final week or two. He needs her now more than she needs him, especially to get big crowds and especially after tonight, and since the only ideology she truly seems committed to is her own ambition I'm imagining the repellent nature of the loser stench will extend from downticket Republicans to Palin herself by November 4th, unless he pulls within 5 points and 20 Electoral College votes of Obama again, seriously.

On the other hand, Joe Biden successfully advanced the narrative tying John McCain to George W. Bush as more of the same. He was particularly brilliant in taking apart the maverick meme, finding a perfect opening after Palin relied on calling herself and McCain their own nickname a third time too many. (Who gives themselves nicknames or even touts them in the real world without looking like a fool?) He knowledgeably took apart that meme, so now the more McCain says it, the more we'll remember Joe proving that McCain has never been a maverick where it really counted in people's lives.

The other phrase for such a non-helpful maverick is, of course, juvenile delinquent.

Biden also took apart Dick Cheney, wailed on McCain as wrong on the war etc. in perfect echo of Obama's strongest moment last Friday night, offered real rather than index card, off-question answers, and had the perfect demeanor vs. the over-wired, winking and jiving Ms. Palin. While she was a little less snarky than in the past, a little less McNasty, she nonetheless blew not only the name of a general (hearkening back to the Civil War), but she blew the biggest moment of the debate, when Joe Biden revealed his humanity and she could only respond with another rehearsed, off-moment talking point:



But the real campaign news of the day is that McCain is pulling up stakes in Michigan. He's on the run now, trying to hold the states George Bush won in 2004. While there could still be a mini-swing or two back to McCain before the election, this does mean he's making hard choices on where to put diminishing resources, which also means Obama can get aggressive more places, maybe lead McCain to have to defend, say, North Carolina more aggressively. This also means McCain will go untethered now -- expect to see vicious smears both above and below the radar of the most dishonest or immoral kind.

Maybe there's a moment when McCain realizes he can't win the election, or when some GOP honchos make that realization and put a bridle on him for the good of the country or just to start rebuilding the reputation of the Party. As Biden said in the debate, McCain is offering no coherent, realistic plans for anything, so what does he have to run on but negative campaigning?

But I think guys like McCain go down the hardest. And for Republicans, when all else fails, there's still this angle to fall back on:



As they say in Chicago: Vote early, vote often.

The McNasties

Taken separately now over the past few days, John McCain and chosen running mate Sarah Palin are really the nastiest two pieces of business in memory, making even memories El Presidente himself back in his glorious patriotism sneering salad days seeming positively "roguish" in comparison.

At the top of the ticket is a very, very angry and narcissistic man who let it all loose during his interview with the editors at the Des Moines Register -- which had endorsed him in the Primary:



McNasty can't even look Obama in the eye on the Senate floor anymore -- per David Nather at CQ Politics tonight:

Let the record reflect that Barack Obama made the approach to John McCain tonight.

As the two shared the Senate floor tonight for the first time since they won their party nominations, Obama stood chatting with Democrats on his side of the aisle, and McCain stood on the Republican side of the aisle.

So Obama crossed over into enemy territory.

He walked over to where McCain was chatting with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. And he stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain.

McCain shook it, but with a “go away” look that no one could miss. He tried his best not to even look at Obama.

Finally, with a tight smile, McCain managed a greeting: “Good to see you.”

Obama got the message. He shook hands with Martinez and Lieberman — both of whom greeted him more warmly — and quickly beat a retreat back to the Democratic side.

But while one can argue that McCain earned his crotchitity, who the hell does Sarah Palin think she is snarking on Joe Biden?:



Is this what "letting Palin be Palin" mean, as rightwing politicos have been calling for? Let her be an undercutty little sneak? Hee hee hee Second Grade hee hee hee. Stay on your playground if you like, Governor, but Joe Biden is an adult who answers questions directly, and whether or not you agree with his answer, at least there's actually somebody there. Compare their two answers on the Supreme Court in the CBS video here and see if the idea of her in Executive office doesn't scare you.

My prediction for the Thursday night Vice Presidential debate is that she will spout nothing but bullshit, and the only question is how artfully she does it. But it's the Obama problem in reverse -- she'll never be more legitimate than when she's on the same stage as Joe Biden. Thank the good Lord it's only for an hour and a half.

There's no love here except self-love, no love between the two, no love of McCain for anyone who questions him, no love of Palin for anything but Camera One. These two don't offer policies, ideologies or even principles that can help America in its time of need, so they offer nothing but hate in their own custom packages.

And the polls show it.