Mark McKinnon Dissents a Bit, But Also Defends Steve Schmidt

michael – You need to correct your header – just a little grammar typo.

This is not a bad argument. It’s worth noting, though, that McKinnon treated this campaign the way a cat treats a puddle of perfume.

Republicans can do no wrong? Ok. Thanks for posting MS

Considering McKinnon left the campaign because he didn’t want to be involved in disqualifying Obama, how can he say Schmidt’s run a “very good campaign,” and that he wouldn’t have done anything of “significant difference?” It seems to me they’ve run exactly the kind of campaign McKinnon didn’t want to be associated with.

fixed.

Okay, let’s see if I can figure out how to unmoderate this comment: Considering he left the campaign because he didn’t want to be involved in disqualifying Obama, how can McKinnon say Schmidt’s run a very good campaign, and that he wouldn’t have done anything of significant difference? It seems to me they’ve run exactly the kind of campaign McKinnon didn’t want to be associated with. -Have removed quote marks-

Unfortunately I cant cuss at Mike Scherer anymore because of this new set up. But I will take issue with the dumb guy that you posted. First of all if he was a part of McCain’s campaign wouldnt he know that McCain was a bomber pilot and not a fighter pilot? Secondly is he really going to try to over look the Palin pick as a key to McCain being down in the polls. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt picked that airhead and they definitely should be held accountable for that. That is just a guy who wants to bash someone but doesnt have the heart to so he ends up saying that defeat was inevitable but the race isnt over. Scherer you should REALLY insult him and for onc tell HIM to grow a pair!

Now i didnt even cuss and I am still stuck in moderation. I give up

thanks Michael – can you get comments out of oblivion too?

On the one hand, this was pretty tough. On the other hand, the opponent is an african-american man who many think is a secret muslim.

McCain should have done more to get the base fired up between March and September. He was diddering around during the Clinton/Obama fight and it cost him.

He should have thrown bombs then, got the base fired up. Then there would have been no need for a Palin to enthuse the base but frighten moderates. I have gone into base world tonight. They are taking Palin’s side in the skirmishes between the two camps.

stuck in oblivion – will chat tomorrow. night all.

I wonder why this guy used the terms “discredit him” instead of the more appropriate “smear him”.

It is worth noting that for a while now that the republican spin is “If it weren’t for the economy”
and yet every indicator going into the election was that it would be a Democratic year.
As has been born out, so far, in races large and small across the country.
Add to that McCain’s approval ratings after each debate. They dropped each time.
People, by which I mean those outside the media and Beltway, just do not like him.
Why that is so hard to accept for so many is up to them to explain. They cling to him the way they clung to George W Bush. The people lead.

Most of all, I know that Steve Schmidt and his colleagues have run a very good campaign and have taken McCain further than he had any reasonable right to, given the political climate.

This is, quite simply, nonsense. An unwittingly comical counterfactual. This is Bagdad Bobism. They have run a very bad campaign. Res ipsa loquitor and quod erat demonstrandum and radix malorum cupiditas est. The queen of hearts would only believe this before breakfast. Some popcultural reference is on the tip of my memory, but I can’t quite reach it.
It’s true that gap is as wide as it is because of the Crash, but Obama was leading in PA, CO and VA before that, and Palin was picked before things got really bad too. And there are lots of things that Obama could have used and hasn’t, at least as much as he could have (“you wouldn’t do it, my friends!” “I did everything I could to get President Bush elected! Twice!”). And McCain’s foreign policy capacities are dangerously over-rated.

Also, he was a bomber pilot, not a fighter pilot. People really have to stop listening to Tom “Daddy Issues” Brokaw on McCain.

Jim, Foolish Literalist, un-nym’d

What McKinnon seems to (wantonly) overlook is the fact that Palin imploded and McBush exposed himself as more of the a**hole he really is about the same time that the economy nosedived. The economy simply provides a more convenient excuse that happens to be outside the control of the idiots in his campaign.

I don’t pretend to know anything about running a political campaign, and even I recognize that the Three Stooges appear to have been reincarnated.

I, too, have to disagree with McKinnon.

Even without the economic crisis, McCain’s pick of Palin – counseled by Schmidt – would have been enough to do him in. Check the weekly polling data – McCain was only up, briefly, just after his pick of Palin. After the nation got their first good look at her in the Gibson interview, the numbers started to fall. After the Couric interview, they fell more. After the VP debate, even more. She energized the base, but alienated everyone else. The base was the one group who had nowhere else to go…McCain needed them less than he needed the independents and centrists. I would guess that as much as a quarter of Obama’s September fundraising haul can be attributed to Sarah Palin. Bad, bad choice.

Aside from Palin, Schmidt, as campaign manager, is the one who thought this campaign could be won without a coherent policy narrative. One can’t blame Schmidt for thinking that, since he’s from the Rove school of political character assassination. But you aren’t going to win on those grounds with a candidate who’s attached at the hip to the most unpopular president of the modern era.

Then there’s the whole issue of Schmidt not being able to see beyond the 60s culture war tactics that have served Republicans so well for 40 years. Shouldn’t he have been asking himself how those could succeed in a race against a post-Boomer candidate, with an electorate mostly now too young to remember the 60s?

Schmidt failed McCain in the same way Penn failed Hillary – by not realizing that the game had changed.

Jim they say you can get your old sn back if you go to your profile on wordpress. Jayackroyd seems to be the authority on it though so if you see him on a thread you might want to ask him about it. That is assuming you don’t want that long string of letters and numbers as your sn of course.

It’s not the economy stupid…it’s McCain. The person who should be thrown under the bus (if the GOP loses) isn’t the chief strategist or the campaign manager, but the person at the top of the ticket. The campaign has been so reflective of McCain’s own flaws as a candidate and leader (gadfly, temper, inability to stick to a coherent message even when guided to do so) that we will consider ourselves lucky if he is not the next President. Deciding to disqualify Obama (which continues on TV and the stump to this day) means failing to qualify oneself, which McCain has failed to do. There is still little positive articulation of why people would want to vote for him.

Well, let’s try this again:
I, too, have to disagree with McKinnon.

Even without the economic crisis, McCain’s pick of Palin – counseled by Schmidt – would have been enough to do him in. Check the weekly polling data – McCain was only up, briefly, just after his pick of Palin. After the nation got their first good look at her in the Gibson interview, the numbers started to fall. After the Couric interview, they fell more. After the VP debate, even more. She energized the base, but alienated everyone else. The base was the one group who had nowhere else to go…McCain needed them less than he needed the independents and centrists. I would guess that as much as a quarter of Obama’s September fundraising haul can be attributed to Sarah Palin. Bad, bad choice.

Aside from Palin, Schmidt, as campaign manager, is the one who thought this campaign could be won without a coherent policy narrative. One can’t blame Schmidt for thinking that, since he’s from the Rove school of political character assassination. But you aren’t going to win on those grounds with a candidate who’s attached at the hip to the most unpopular president of the modern era.

Then there’s the whole issue of Schmidt not being able to see beyond the 60s culture war tactics that have served Republicans so well for 40 years. Shouldn’t he have been asking himself how those could succeed in a race against a post-Boomer candidate, with an electorate mostly now too young to remember the 60s?

Schmidt failed McCain in the same way Penn failed Hillary – by not realizing that the game had changed.

It’s all over except for the voting and Michael is still fluffing. The economy tanked the same week Palin had her week long train wreck on CBS news. One word for this campaign – FAIL. One reason – Palin.

Ok, I give up. Maybe someday I’ll come back when you’ve fixed this mess.

I wonder if the press covering for McCain’s temperment ended up hurting him. AMC wrote about how McCain is like a cranky uncle with too much coffee. But the press (the base) ignored it in their reporting. When McCain was his cranky self during the debates, it came unexpected to people who aren’t political junkies.

I thought McKinnon was out of the McCain campaign. Is he back? I guess he dosn’t know what he wants to do.

I don’t think that McKinnon is really defending Schmidt. As a matter of fact, his attitude seems to be more that of a “good soldier” a la Colin Powell than anything else.
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Let me elaborate a bit:
He is basically saying that Schmidt is doing what he had to do and made the most of McCain’s chances. That isn’t a defense, that is a professional evaluation.
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On the other hand, McKinnon states that he didn’t want to be a part of what would be the only strategy that was likely to work: to “disqualify” Obama.
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If you think about what he didn’t say, which are the specifics behind his decision to not participate, it is there that you will find the meat of the message.

Jennofark, Don’t go!
Compare and contrast:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/25/new_rnc_ad_aims_to_stir_doubts.html

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/25/obama_asks_will_the_country_be.html

Yeah that John McCain is SUCH an honorable guy. I guess thats why used car salesmen love him…

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/10/used-car-dealers-john-mccain.html

“If you think about what he didn’t say, which are the specifics behind his decision to not participate, it is there that you will find the meat of the message.”

“The notes not played and the pauses taken can be as important as the notes played and how they are played”

You and your beatnik ideas!

53_3

McKinnon is saying Schmidt did the best he could do but thats intentionally overlooking the fact that Schmidt and Davis chose the worst VP candidate in the history of VPs and candidates. Its just intellecually dishonest and if you go to the actual article you see that he does touch on the criticisms of Sarah Palin so it isnt like he doesn’t bring it up.

have run a very good campaign and have taken McCain further than he had any reasonable right to

McCain convinced about 60% of the country that he is not just the lesser of two candidates, but fundamentally, temperamentally unfit to govern. He drawing comparisons to George Wallace and Walter Mitty.

This catastrophic campaign is best described not as a train wreck, but “a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks.”

This campaign is like a snowmobile, racing across the frozen tundra, until it flips, trapping the driver and passenger beneath it. At night, the ice weasels come.

Jennofark — I can’t seem to stay out of the penalty box either I think it has a snark detector.

Dee and Jenn get put in purgatory.
Sexism.

I just defended Dee and Jenn and this is what I got-

“Your comment is awaiting moderation.”

et-bay ealers-day ike-lay rill-day aby-bay rill-day — stick that in your pipe.

I read this article and I think that at least they are consistent. Just like the lunatic fringe — even the so-called mainstream right live in a sort of alternative universe where up is down and good is bad. This campaign was reprehensible by any real world standards but when you believe any publicity is good publicity. Than a good campaign is one that can keep its candidate in the news – content less important. So what was the problem with SNL exactly?

AP article. More corruption from Palin. She rigged the pipeline deal.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PALIN_PIPELINE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Would somebody please let Mark know that it’s not Steve Schmidt’s fault, it’s not the economy’s fault. It’s John McCain’s fault that he is losing this campaign.

McCain’s 5 top problems:

1) McCain doesn’t know why he wants to be president. This left a vacuum for advisers like Schmidt. Big mistake. The narratives that the campaign tried to sell us were confusing and ineffectual but boiled down to this: McCain was from a long line of McCains who had served their country honorably so for vote McCain. OK, McCain deserves a medal — not a key to the Oval Office.

2) McCain seems not to possess any core beliefs, ergo we can’t believe what McCain says or does. He changes course to suit himself. The economy is strong! Suspend the campaign! Obama palls around with terrorists! Obama is not an Arab! The Republican base, who have tried to work with McCain for 26 years, have recognized there is no there there for a long time, hence their weak support for his candidacy.

3) McCain is not his own man. Unlike Tony Blair, he never planned to reinvent his party — to steer the party in his direction. Instead, McCain tried to turn himself into a card-carrying member of the base. He’s no maverick. If he was, he would have ignored the GOP base and picked Lieberman or Bloomberg as VP. The real McCain is a wuss.

4) McCain is disorganized. So his campaign is disorganized. And if McCain can’t even run a campaign, how the heck can he run a country? McCain has surrounded himself with Bush-Cheney staffers long after the American public had grown weary of Bush-Cheney tactics. After eight years, we’re not going to go along with their mean-spirited, divisive games anymore.

5) McCain is cranky. Who wants an unhappy soul as leader of the free world?

Off topic: Yeeeesh. I’m not sure I like this new blog format that the design geniuses at Time.com have invented. Blech.

I understand Mark M is “one of the good guys” who didn’t want to be part of a campaign that was all about “disqualify(ing) Obama” but this is pure BS
From the article
“Only nine percent of respondents think the country is headed in the right direction. I know what you’re thinking. “Who are those nine percent?”
So, by this measure, John McCain should be polling at about nine percent”

His measure of how effective the campaign is-better than nine percent? Every Democrat and republican starts with 40+.
Also do we shrug off what Mark M really thinks about how honorable McCain is? He KNEW the honorable McCain would run a destructive campaign.

I wonder if Mike Scherer is planning on blogging about the Iraqis calling Bush’s bluff. And bigger than that Russia ends up looking like the good guy in this deal.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/54757.html

Let’s see. Given his media-enhanced maverick persona, McCain is the one Republican who probably could’ve gotten away with running away from the GOP brand this year. So why did he run a campaign right out of the Republican textbook? The policy part of his convention speech was circa 1984. He blew it.

McKinnon is right that McCain was destined to lose this race, but that was pretty much set in stone early in the year, regardless of who the nominees were. The fundamentals so strongly favor the Dems that the Republicans would be hard pressed to win the presidency. OTOH, if this race turns into a blowout, McCain’s failure to rally the base before the general public started paying attention is probably a huge factor.

Instead of blaming the economy, Republicans should simply recognize the fact that McCain has proved to be a poor candidate. McCain’s main argument, which he expresses in an angry, aggrieved manner is his years of experience. Yet, experience matters for nothing when it leads you to defend a failed war and choose an extremist mediocrity as a running mate. And as far as his response to the economy, which could have turned a negative into a plus, McCain offers up Reagan’s forty year solution: more tax cuts and Phil Gramm. Of course, permitting your running mate to systematically demonize Americans who live in non-rural areas is not the best way to win the hearts and minds of the 80% of the population who live in cities and suburbs.

Maybe Palin will use Schmidt when she comes back in 2012

Best third party attack ad on McCain so far

I’d like to point out (to Mr. McKinnon) that McCain was an exceptionally crappy pilot.

OT, but this new format makes the comments very hard to read. IMHO.

Why is anyone pretending that picking Palin to be his running mate wasn’t the single most boneheaded move of the entire campaign and did more to discredit him among rational Republicans than any other event.

Of course his insistence that up is down whenever confronted with his misleading characterizations of his opponent isn’t helping him a bit either.

Screw McKinnon…Steve Schmidt DID LOSE this election for McCain…by hoping the same old attacks on patriotism, guns, abortion and hate would work again…

He didn’t count on the fact that most people would be suffering from real problems and open to new solutions rather than falling back into the old reactive patterns…

McKinnon is as much of a loser as bullet-head, McKrusty and the Palin…all victims of the old politics!

Why is anyone pretending that picking Palin to be his running mate wasn’t the single most boneheaded move of the entire campaign and did more to discredit him among rational Republicans than any other event.

Salter (I think, might have been someone else) said to him if you pick anyone else you’ll lose. If you pick her, you might win.

I believe he was told this. I believe he bought it. I don’t believe anything could have saved his candidacy, as I’ve been saying for some time.

jayackroyd,

I take it you didnt read that story on the NYTimes website about the remaking of John McCain. They talked about how he came to pick Sarah Palin and he didnt pick her. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt did. They did it not because he couldnt win with the other guys. They picked her because she would play into the whole “maverick” meme. This they did oblivious to the fact that on the tapes of debates that they watched it was obvious she didnt have a great grasp of policy when running for governer. Seriously you definitely want to check that story out.

Jim, Foolish Literalist - Go to My Account, Edit Profile, Put in your name and nickname and pick nickname in the display name as.

> Why is anyone pretending that picking Palin to be his running mate wasn’t the single most boneheaded move of the entire campaign
‘
Well, you know, with so many of them from which to choose, maybe it folks found it hard to settle on just one…

mrreallyniceguy Says:
October 26th, 2008 at 12:03 am
> Why is anyone pretending that picking Palin to be his running mate wasn’t the single most boneheaded move of the entire campaign
‘
Well, you know, with so many of them from which to choose, maybe it folks found it hard to settle on just one…

Yeah but that was the one that lead to most of the others.

Well, that was special. Now when do we get a decent comment format again?

With the mounting bad news for their campaign, McCain/Palin will have no choice but to go increasingly negative in their attacks. Anybody else see this leaked 527 spot?

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Leaked_Pro_McCain_527_Negative_Ad_Small_Town_Fear_Itself/

McCain was a BOMBER PILOT, not a fighter pilot. And that is using the term “pilot” loosely, as he crashed more of the things then he landed.
P.S. Bombers generally do not do “barrel rolls”.

@ trifecta:
I have gone into base world tonight. They are taking Palin’s side

As Arte Johnson liked to say, very interesting. Got any links?

All right, I’m going to have to get creative with my cursing here.

“If not for a major economic event that interceded a few weeks ago (for which a strong majority of voters blame Republicans), this race might still be competitive. It isn’t Steve Schmidt’s fault. It’s the economy, stupid.”

On the one hand, it’s kind of a valid argument in that McCain was neck and neck in the polls before the banks all collapsed.

On the other hand, it does nothing to invalidate the Democrat position, since it’s the GOP’s fault that economy has collapsed into a [insert horrifying depiction of carnal activity here].

Also, zitidiamond up above makes another excellent point:
McCain has failed utterly to roll with the punches. If he was a good candidate, he would have taken the failed economy and ran with it. But instead, he took it and [insert depiction of completely inappropriate bodily function here].

Bah! Comment awaiting moderation!

Congratulations, High Sheriffs! You have fashioned the perfect weapon to use against all that high traffic you’ve been getting!

Hmmmm. So, it took a day and a half to create a format that’s a lot less easy to read and screws up your username (how did Elvis and P-NNTO manage to get spaces and caps in their names on Word Press?). And no preview function?

The one that’s really going to chafe is the ‘comments awaiting moderation’. The spontaneity and lack of censorship were the things that separated the Swamp from other, lesser sites. Try doing a live blog with commenters on election night with that in place.

Pathetic.

And oh look, you can’t space out paragraphs. This new format is worse in just about every way possible.

What Newsfatigue said.

And what all have said re: the new shite format. Are you guys cutting staff or what? Fix it please. Most unreadable format I can imagine.

according to the LA Times, McKinnon doesn’t mind running campaigns aimed at disqualifying the opposition — he did it because Obama is black.

But he’s sticking by his vow that if the Democratic candidate was Obama, he would step off the McCain ad team because Obama’s election “would send a great message to the country and the world.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/mccain.html

as if a woman president wouldn’t send a great message….

Slowhand,

I really hope this is temporary. I found spacing kind of works if you put a period.
.
Between your paragraphs. But the spacing between posts sucks too.

Hey gunny – how are you?
-
KT has indicated it’s temporary. They just did this to rescue the blog after their server crashed. At least they haven’t given us snowflakes.
-
the Anchorage Daily News endorsed Obama this morning
http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/567867.html

and by the way – aren’t you up kinda early? or are you traveling.

Hey Kathy,

I’m great and yes I’m up early soaking up as much information as I can. So many sites and so little time.
.

And since you are up just out this article from the Houston Chron concerning early voting here in Harris County.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/6078555.html

Thought I’d log in before matins and see if I still have an account.

Hosanna!

good article gunny. It’s interesting that one Republican candidate for judge has such a strong showing. I think we’re all better served when people don’t vote blindly for party – something it seems most Republicans don’t understand, so they have generally replaced good governance with anyone who will toe the line. At any rate, it’s heartening to see such gains in Texas. Hard to remember it wasn’t that long ago that Texas had a Democratic governor (may she rest in peace).

Ah Michael, interpreting stuff in the McCain campaign so that we can understand the complexities. Good juxtaposition: Mark MacKinnon/Steve Schmidt: man of conscience accounting for man of destruction.

“It’s interesting that one Republican candidate for judge has such a strong showing.”

Kathy,

That’s judge’s position is more like a county administrator. It’s not a trial judge. He was helped by his performance managing Ike recovery.

NYT’s front page, top left corner is deeply concerned, on behalf of the Democrats, on attaining too large a majority.

My user name was taken! What the heck?

You can put up a distinct display name.

You can put up a distinct display name.

This is a transparent move to convince party leadership and the base to allow the same campaign managers to run the same campaign in ’12.

When the dust settles and people do an autopsy on the McCain campaign, the Palin pick will go down as the biggest error.

Supposedly Palin is preparing for the coming battle of who will lead the Republican right. As a liberal Democrat, I am rooting for Palin to win the power struggle.

davidsidlinger, great insight. Often the simplest explanation is the right one.

Thanks, ivb

Let’s see if I can put my argument in simple terms. I don’t like either candidate and didn’t vote for either one. I am an Independent.
But McCain will lose for several simple reasons, as far as I can tell:
1. He is glued to Bush’s hip and has been for a long time;
2. Bush is the worst President we have ever had;
3. As a result, his record is glued to that of Bush’s, in spite of the rare few occasions when he has been a “maverick”;
4. Though Obama has changed positions a few times, McCain seems to be willing to change position whenever he felt that the political winds had changed. As a result people tend to view him as a man with too few principles he believes in;
5. McCain’s temperament. He is too much of a hot head for the job he wants. He is widely viewed as one who would push the button way too quickly;
6. McCain’s pick of Palin as his VP choice. Done in haste, with no apparent vetting. At age 72 if he won, with a one in three chance, according to actuarial tables, of not surviving his first term in office, the country would have an individual as the new prez, whom to date has shown herself to be an airhead, and way too conservative for a country which desires to be governed from the center;
7. Finally, in my opinion, McCain has worn his “war hero” label until it has become ragged and threadbare. You can’t win a Presidential election with just that as your main argument.

McKinnon says:

“One of the physical laws of politics is that if your campaign wins, you’re a genius. If you lose, you’re an idiot.”

Here’s my corollary to that comment:

If it walks like an idiot, and talks like an idiot…”

The good news here (if you don’t feel sad enough already about the ruin the GOP has brought to this country and our sense of national identity. and will continue in its dumbness to foment) is that Republicans will choose to point fingers and deflect reasonable discourse away from the facts.

That’s bad news for their party and for personal integrity alike, but that’s the tack the neoconservatives have taken for years and now that they’re finally stewing in their own juices seems just reward, but, even for a liberal, is not easy to watch. It all seems so unnecessary, but then the actions that come out of failed greed and “misunderestimated” applications of secret power are never pretty to watch.

Just as Hillary Clinton found out, when you make the mistake of hiring people who make one stupid miscalculation after another, you are running on the artifice of hoping for a deus ex machina (October surprise, claims of socialism, he’s not like us and all the rest of the blather)instead of the cleaving to the art of sincere vision, character and integrity: all things that Americans in 2008, having been once again betrayed by their leaders, are starving for.

Obama knew that two years ago, that’s why he jumped the gun. He could see how bereft we were of pride in our nation. He chose to act, and put his future political career on the line for his country, because indeed as we’re finding out and will have validated in 8 days, the time is now.

So while it’s convenient and less painful for Michael and Mr. McKinnon to take the backdoor out of the burning theater by blaming the economy, the corpse of which by the way lays rotting at the feet of the Grand Old Party, in truth the GOP’s political raison d’etre has gotten so narrow, so arch, so guttersnipe-arcane that it has narrowed its sights in a pathetic and boringly predictable style, seemingly designed to lose millions of the very voters it’s trying to court.

It’s about Change, folks. Not the word. Not Joe The Plumber and Tito the Builder, but a real and fundamental reworking of how government does it’s thing. Anything less and we deserve to continue to swim in the cesspool that our “leaders” have thrown us into. And we voted for them, don’t forget that.

In that respect, Obama has maintained so much clarity, presence and sheer integrity through the primariy and general election season that even idiotic campaigns like Clinton’s and McCain’s couldn’t effectively play the race card and so turn the election based on still-present racial animosity and fear in America. While any forward thinking person would interpret this as a blessing, as a pure critique of the McCain staff, starting with Schmidt, you truly do have to judge its efforts as mind-bogglingly idiotic.

These events also speak well for the changing mentality of the electorate, which I hope to be a good sign for the future. America will rise or fall on its ability to embrace globalism. Having a black man lead America at long last (I’m white and 63 by the way) is a powerful message to the rest of the world that yes, we are willing to grow up a bit. We are willing to take a chance on something more than the mind-numbing stupidity we’ve had rammed down our throats for far too long in our national politics.

Meanwhile, Mr. McKinnon, and Michael, much as it’s clear you’d love to absolve the campaign’s venal brain trust, sorry: the verdict is in and the wolves are at the door. Idiotic decisions, talking points, VP selection and the rest have robbed McCain of whatever sincerity his voice may have had in the beginning.

But I suspect, as do many millions who will jump sides this election, that McCain was never the cleverly media-crafted Maverick he wanted us to believe he was. How else to explain the artless attacks, missed opportunities to open a sincere dialogue with America, instead of the dumb-down rhetorical bile of the last several months?

This could have been a soul-lifting Presidential campaign, and if McCain had kept his word in the very beginning to run a clean campaign, Obama would have happily met that challenge. All of us Obama supporters believe that about our candidate. He responded in kind to the grammar school-style attacks with focus, precision (laser vs. bazooka) and still maintained his dignity and class. That’s what we need in the White House.

So, now the Last Hurrah of the Angry, Frightened Right must by nature crawl, bloody and battered, out the saloon door, because its limited intelligence and character would not allow it to make the one change it has never understood it needed to make: it needed to appeal to the heart of the nation, not to it’s reptilian, fight-or-flight brain.

But fear, not hatred, is the antithesis of love. Frightened people always forget that. The ruins of our country are ample testimony, aren’t they?

This new server sucks…doesn’t even retain paragraph breaks. Bring back the old one!