McCain stands up (for a moment)
Saturday, October 11th, 2008John McCain turned on his most vitriolic supporters yesterday, correcting a woman who thought Obama was an Arab terrorist, and telling the crowds they don’t have to be scared in the event of a Democratic victory. He deserves full credit for this, though of course it was his campaign who gave these ignorant fuckwits the idea in the first place, and they’re going to keep giving those ignorant fuckwits the same ideas for the next three weeks (and the four years beyond that too).
Still, one can’t help but wonder how McCain would be doing in the polls if he had never called up the forces of darkness to begin with. Probably even worse than he is now, but still it’s fun to think about: what if McCain had run the kind of campaign I suspect he wanted to run? You think he likes any of this shit? You think he enjoys pandering to the racist morons who were totally convinced eight years ago that he’d fathered a black child? You think he relishes saying that Joel Osteen’s book is the best thing he’s ever read? McCain’s essential tragedy is that the math of the Republican Party as it’s now configured forces its candidates to pander to a voter base that (let’s face it) probably would be a lot happier in a theocracy than a republic.
And that’s why his “stand of honor” yesterday ultimately means little. Even as the Senator cringes in the face of the venom he’s presiding over, his paid operatives keep on pumping out the Jesusland bullshit, portraying Obama as a man whose first move as president will either be to blow up the White House or paint the whole thing black. These are the same people who McCain once promised would burn in a “special place in hell” for smearing him so badly back in 2000. He may end up in one of his own for joining forces with them. Looking at his anguished face in yesterday’s rally, he may be there already.