The feeling is familiar. I had it four years ago and four years before that: a sinking feeling in the stomach.
So? Stop eating at "discount day old curry" stands, you wanker.
| I think it was Ethel's chili ... |
It's a kind of physical pessimism which says: "It's happening again. The Democrats are about to lose an election they should win - and it could not matter more."
In my head, I'm not as anxious for Barack Obama's chances as I was for John Kerry's in 2004 or Al Gore's in 2000. He is a better candidate than both put together,
If I was Gore or Kerry I think I'd be insulted
| Kerry was a bumbler who thought he should run for President because he was entitled. Gore thought he was entitled, but he was a pretty darned good politician who would have won in 2000 if he had run true to his roots. Obama can't run true to his and so has to be the flim-flam man ... |
and all the empirical evidence says this year favours Democrats more than any since 1976. But still, I can't shake off the gloom.
Look at yesterday's opinion polls, which have John McCain either in a dead heat with Obama or narrowly ahead. Given the well-documented tendency of African-American candidates to perform better in polls than in elections - thanks to people who say they will vote for a black man but don't - this suggests Obama is now trailing badly.
Had to get that racism thingy in there, didn't ya?
More troubling was the ABC News-Washington Post survey which found McCain ahead among white women by 53% to 41%. Two weeks ago, Obama had a 15% lead among women. There is only one explanation for that turnaround, and it was not McCain's tranquilliser of a convention speech: Obama's lead has been crushed by the Palin bounce.
Remember....90% of blacks voting for blacks based only on melanin....good. 8% of women voting for women based only on X chromosomes.....bad, very bad, if she hasn't been vetted by NOW first.
So you can understand my pessimism. But it's now combined with a rising frustration. I watch as the Democrats stumble, uncertain how to take on Sarah Palin. Fight too hard, and the Republican machine, echoed by the ditto-heads in the conservative commentariat on talk radio and cable TV, ...
| Does that include Olbermann and Matthews? Campbell Brown? Sally Quinn? I had no idea cable TV was part of the conservative commentariat. Methinks the writer uses commentariat incorrectly; it applies to the progressive types for whom commentariat is just a sub-set of the larger 'secretariat' ... |
... will brand Democrats sexist, elitist snobs, patronising a small-town woman. Do nothing, and Palin's rise will continue unchecked, her novelty making even Obama look stale, her star power energising and motivating the Republican base.
So somehow Palin slips out of reach, no revelation - no matter how jaw-dropping or career-ending were it applied to a normal candidate - doing sufficient damage to slow her apparent march to power, dragging the charisma-deprived McCain behind her.
| Has there been a 'career-ending' revelation in this election so far? I would have thought being associated with William Ayers was career-ending but obviously not. |
We know one of Palin's first acts as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska was to ask the librarian the procedure for banning books. Oh, but that was a "rhetorical" question, says the McCain-Palin campaign. We know Palin is not telling the truth when she says she was against the notorious $400m "Bridge to Nowhere" project in Alaska - in fact, she campaigned for it - but she keeps repeating the claim anyway. She denounces the dipping of snouts in the Washington trough - but hired costly lobbyists to make sure Alaska got a bigger helping of federal dollars than any other state.
She claims to be a fiscal conservative, but left Wasilla saddled with debts it had never had before. She even seems to have claimed "per diem" allowances - taxpayers' money meant for out-of-town travel - when she was staying in her own house.
| To which she was entitled, since she was commuting. Yawn. It's rather stupid for a columnist to cite things that have already been debunked -- it suggests that said columnist doesn't read the news ... |
Yet somehow none of this is yet leaving a dent. The result is that a politician who conservative
???
blogger Andrew Sullivan calls a "Christianist" - seeking to politicise Christianity the way Islamists politicise Islam - could soon be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
| Yah, sure, cite Andy Sullivan, there's a sure ticket. Andy seems to have all the theology of Christianity worked out in his head, and if you don't believe in the authenticity of his Christianity, you're an evil Christianist. |
Remember, this is a woman who once addressed a church congregation, saying of her work as governor - transport, policing and education - "really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God".
If Sarah Palin defies the conventional wisdom that says elections are determined by the top of the ticket, and somehow wins this for McCain, what will be the reaction? Yes, blue-state America will go into mourning once again, feeling estranged in its own country.
Prozac helps with that, you know, along with good nutrition and exercise.
| The door to Canada is still open ... |
A generation of young Americans - who back Obama in big numbers - will turn cynical, concluding that politics doesn't work after all. And, most depressing, many African-Americans will decide that if even Barack Obama - with all his conspicuous gifts - could not win, then no black man can ever be elected president.
| Try running Colin Powell -- in either party -- and see what happens ... |
But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most.
| We don't, but then again, we're less inclined to consider the reactions of Europe. As I tell my European friends, my ancestors came to America to get away from their ancestors. |
For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
| So run Obama for Chancellor of Germany, or Secretary-General of the UN. |
If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.
And if we could choose your leaders, virtually all of the mutts in office that the world has selected wouldn't be there either. Them's the breaks, kid.
| The author assumes he still lives in a 'free' world, not recognizing what's happened to Europe. |
The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of free beer his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world's population, opposed the Iraq war.
| We got that message. Have you noticed what's been happening in Iraq lately? |
McCain supported it, peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11.
| No, McCain has NOT peddled that lie. No one in the administration peddled that lie, either. We noted that Saddam had links to terrorists, and such links were intolerable in a day where terrorists such as al-Qaeda could attack our country. |
Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod over the international system but will treat alliances and global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies.
You're right. We desperately need to make sure the views of genocidal tin pot dictators are given the same respect as those of democratically elected leaders who represent the views and desires of the people.
| When a group of democratic countries sit in an international forum with a group of thug states, and then try to 'get along' and 'work together', the result is usually much closer to what the thug states want, compared to what the democracies want. It's basic psychology. And then the democracies lament that they aren't trying hard enough and that their leaders don't 'understand' the world. That's basic psychology as well. |
McCain might talk a good game on climate change, but a repeated floor chant at the Republican convention was "Drill, baby, drill!", as if the solution to global warming were not a radical rethink of the US's entire energy system but more offshore oil rigs.
Uh, no, sweetie. (May I call you sweetie? Barack likes to call journos of the opposite sex that, so I figured you wouldn't mind.) Gov. Palin was talking about energy independence from psychotic idiots like Chavez and the Saudis, and the crowd responded.
| The author focuses on one point of a multi-point energy plan. As Gov. Palin noted, we need to do it all. |
If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.
| Well okay then, you'll be unhappy. I think we'll just have to carry that cross ... |
Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration.
| Um, no, anti-Bushism has simply allowed anti-Americanism to come out more openly and more virulently. It's now acceptable for the elites in polite society to say what they've been thinking all along. |
But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.
Oh dear. I think they're serious this time. They're gonna give us a few less frites in the bistro next summer if we don't do what they want! Oh, the inhumanity!
| Note that the writer assumes that it's all our fault and that we're the ones who have to do all the changing and accommodating. The Euro elites don't have to change a thing, apparently. |
And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will be harsh.
Because, as we know, America is the most racist society in the entire world.
In that circumstance, Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that "the United States had its day, but in the end couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race".
Even if it's not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign manager boasts that this election is "not about the issues."
Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem even less of a patriotic American than he already seemed. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.
Well, by all means, please start calling random voters in battlefield states in late October! The best time to call is right after we clean our guns, just before Bible study. We're generally not clinging to anything at that brief moment in time and would love to chat.
| My hope is that we elect McCain and force the Euro elites to 'hear' the message, and then 'act' upon it -- oh silly me, getting the Y'urp-peons to 'act' is nonsense. |
|
