What is it, then?

This election should not be this close, not after the past eight years, not with the current economic crisis, not with the superannuated Republican opponent bereft of ideas and promising more of the same. No way in hell.

An identical white Obama with the same schtick, credentials and campaign would have wrapped this up already.

Obama’s schtick of unity and ‘bipartisan’ cooperation: about 20 years too early and ill-suited to the current political moment, when as stated earlier trench warfare is needed.

Obama’s credentials: thin and wanting. That’s just a fact that his strong supporters have refused to deal with, and in fact if you recall it was spun as a positive early on. After electing an inexperienced Bush 8 years ago and seeing the result (the man child in action), does it surprise you that there are both Democrats & Republicans who are wary of doing it again? (Don’t counter with how inexperienced McCain is, because that’s not the issue).

Obama’s campaign: Vacuous, empty and somewhat self-absorbed. Some of the attacks on him were inevitable, because he has/had many associations which were easy marks for the GOP to highlight: Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, etc. Personally I thought Rev. Wright was right about a lot of things (like America’s reaction to 9/11) and honestly thought Obama would defend him and point out what he was trying to say. But he denounced Wright, saying his words were too “divisive.” So with Obama you get the leftist associations that Republicans can drum up to scare people AND Obama will throw them under the bus. In other words, the GOP gets to have its cake and eat it too.

And yes, Obama’s supporters are a big negative to his campaign, because of the religious devotion shown to him, the bombastic nature of their rhetoric and the way so many tend to lie and be dishonest (even with themselves) about their candidate because they want him to win so badly. Also, Obama ran a scorched-earth campaign in the primary that narrowly clinched him the nomination, but in doing so he pissed away strong progressive support and enthusiasm under the PoliSci 101 calculation that the rest of us had “nowhere else to go” And of course there’s the fact that he has shown himself to be rather spineless. The latest examples are FISA and offshore drilling. But us Hillary supporters were seeing the same thing earlier this year and last on Social Security (playing up the nonexistent ‘crisis’) and health care (his health care plan sucks and isn’t universal by a long shot, but he kept trying to spin it as universal). Even Iraq: when he got to the Senate, despite all that buzz about him being so against the ‘dumb war.’ he voted for the funding. And Samantha Power told the British press that Obama’s ‘timetable’ for withdrawal would be revised based on what “commanders on the ground” told him we needed to do. After that little incident, she resigned from his campaign.

I’m sure you had a different perspective, but you need to understand that none of these things have to do with racism. And I was perfectly OK with Obama (just preferring Hillary) for quite some time & even enthusiastic about his candidacy. You also need to understand that wildly throwing around charges of racism discredits you and discredits Democrats in general, not only because it causes people to question your judgment, but because then it makes it harder to point out legitimate instances of racism. Racism exists in America, but it isn’t what it once (case in point: Obama being the nominee, that’s not insignificant) and it isn’t the reason he’s underperforming.

So you’re saying that the Jeremiah Wright issue stuck to Obama? Are you serious?

FYI, the Wright drama was when I first started having *serious* doubts about Obama. Not because of his relationship with Wright, mind you, but the way in which he so quickly threw Rev. Wright under the bus. In other words, he talked a good progressive game, but he would run for the hills at the slightest GOP or Beltway criticism. How quickly would he throw me under the bus, I wondered? Not long, it turned out. Then he threw his own supporters under the bus on FISA. Then offshore drilling. What’s next?

Mandos wrote:

People made the argument against Hillary that she was a divisive figure. *That* *was* *precisely* *her* *advantage*.

Bingo! It goes back to a quote from Hillary herself: “the fights that are worth fighting for” (youtube link). The writing on the wall says that the OFB f&#^ed up and chose the wrong candidate.

That is a concern for me, particularly if Romney gets the VP slot. Knocking off old JM wouldn’t be too hard, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth if that happened would be enough for the GoP. However, if Obama gets knocked off, god help all of you!

Why should he care, Brandi? It’s not like anyone’s gonna see that area au natural.

Tip, troofie: spit laced with Cheetos dust makes poor-quality lube and tends to leaves orange stains.

I particularly enjoyed my brief joust with DN Nation, who claims that Rev Wright didn’t stick to Obama and in the same breath wonders why Obama can’t get any traction as the campaign continues (he’s actually losing ground as many polls are showing.)

The real pleasure will start Nov 5, as liberals tear themselves apart attacking the intelligence and integrity of the American people for rejecting once again the hateful politics of the far left. Until then, I’ll make due with calling out the denizens of S,N! on their hypocritical bullshit; it’s fun and easy and passes the time until the NFL starts.

I’m debating whether this is high quality agreement snark or real pissiness.

McCain’s primary talent has always been his ability persuade simple-minded people (i.e. his media cheerleading claque) that he is flipping or flopping as a matter of great personal principle and at great possible cost to his political career – even as he has used his various flips and flops to climb the greased pole and become the presidential nominee of his party.

and

The only real publicity I recall McCain getting during that time (80′s and early 90′s -DKW) was over the “issue” (if that’s the right word) of missing POWs in Vietnam. McCain, the POW movement’s former poster boy, suddenly became McCain, Hanoi’s best good buddy on Capitol Hill. The media, which thought the POW activists were a bunch of kooks, gladly gave him an free pass on that particular flip and flop.

and

– but here again, as during the Keating Five scandal, McCain managed to make political vice look like virtue, at least in the media’s eyes. In late April, he gave a speech announcing he’d been wrong not to denounce the Stars and Bars. “I chose to compromise my principles,” he confessed, and “broke my promise to always tell the truth” in order to win in South Carolina.

and

Thus McCain’s promise to run a “respectful campaign.” (He didn’t explain that what he meant was respect for HIM.)

Fucker still writes clear and honest and I challenge any one to start reading his multi-thousand word post and stop part way through. Can’t be done.

Goddess protect us, ANYTHING but an Obama assassination. That would America’s Hutu-v-Tutsi moment, and I’m not sure which “side” gets to play the Hutus, either. Even the most malignant of the Rove/Ailes Atwater alumni get the fear cramps thinking about this, because it would be game-changing like a poolcue in the hands of a PCPed player… during a chess match. If Tribe Resentful morphs into Tribe Retaliation, we.are.all.so.fucked.

On the other hand, my inner Eeyore can lay out a scenario where Old John McSame takes a bullet at the end of / just after the fReichtard Hatefest in the Heartland, and his VP choice announces that only another Rethug president can atone for this crime against Republican Jesus. The problem is, they’d need some kind of semi-presentably “charismatic” replacement candidate to carry it off, and I don’t see much charisma sloshing around the GOPer pool, although of course I ain’t their target market either. Just one more nightmare between now and November — when we can all buckle down and prepare for the tsunami of nightmares coming down in January, no matter which team’s colors are flying from the West Wing turrets.

Lemme splain. No, there is no time. Lemme sum up:

What seventwentyfour said.

And billmon’s return? Glorious!

And Dr. Zen’s harshing my buzz.

It’s fine to say McCain is slinging shit and Obama is walking away clean. But he has a barrow more shit, and whenever our side pushes back, it’s ignored by the media. They don’t want to sell “McCain flipflopper” or “clueless McCain”. They want to sell “McMan of Steel”. And the Repugnicunts only need to get close enough to steal it.

I think it’s still in the balance. I think that Obama hasn’t helped himself by coming out as a rightist. His best selling point is being different. Making it a straight comparison between two “centrists” is a losing bet because you’re kidding yourself if you think Appalachia ends at Pittsburgh.

Fair enough. I’m glad he posted, and I hope to see more.

The lesson he learned, I think, is that pseudo-candor (truthiness) usually trumps the genuine article (McCain was way ahead of his time on this) And so he hasn’t hesitated to flip and flop shamelessly if (and these are the key points) it is in his interest and he thinks he can get away with it.

[…]

And so it’s finally dawning, even on some members of his media “base” (ever the hapless clowns in our political theater of the absurd ) that McCain isn’t quite the straight-talking, straight-shooting military man of honor they thought he was. The White Knight has morphed into the Great White Hope – the GOP machine’s last, desperate chance to avoid the mortal humiliation of being defeated not just by a Democrat, not just by a liberal, but by a liberal Democratic black man.

Sing it, baby.