To tell you the truth, I'm surprised it took 'em this long - they broke out the really nasty stuff on John Kerry waaaay back in August, and they were hitting Al Gore for yeaaaars and years and years. The gloves are off for the next month. Things (and people) are getting really ugly, as the Rec list will attest to.
So, are these bad times? Of COURSE not. As tense as things seem, this is a time for toughness and pride, a time to keep our eyes on the ball. This is the natural consequence of the hard work all of us have been doing for a long time. Why's that?
"I don't want the Republican Party simply defeated in November, I want to see it smashed beyond all recognition, in such wriggling, writhing, anguished disarray that it can barely reconstitute itself, so desperate for answers that it looks to Newt Gingrich for visionary guidance, his wisdom and insight providing the perfect cup of hemlock to finish off the conservative movement for good so that it can rot in the salted earth of memory unmissed and unmourned in toxic obscurity." - James Wolcott
Let me remind you what's at stake, and let me put it to you in the starkest, most Republican-esque terms possible. We (people like me, people like you) are on the threshold of complete dominance of the federal government. The Republicans are reeling from one of the most massive failures in the history of government - they've already lost both houses of Congress, and even the most diehard KoolAid sipper knows that the beating they took in 2006 is nothing compared to the bloodletting that's coming their way in Novemeber. We're not talking just Minnesota here, a swing state with a tradition of guys like Paul Wellstone. We're talking about a party so weakened, so utterly toothless, that they're losing in Kentucky, in North Carolina, home state of Jesse Helms, in Georgia - could you imagine the hysteria if the Republican party picked up Senate seats in California, New York, and Massachusetts in the same year? And the beatdown won't really be finished until 2010. Arizona. Iowa, Ohio - Missouri is always in play as long as there's a Carnahan living there. You might even see South Dakota up for grabs.
As we watch distressing news from Wall Street, we can take some comfort (small comfort, seeing as real people are losing their jobs) in seeing the proverbial bottom fall out of the Republican party. And the exclamation point? We could be 30 days away from the landslide election of a black candidate named Barack Hussein Obama to the nation's highest office - I'm racking my brains, and I cannot think of a more dramatic fuck you to eight years of Bushism and the fear and hatred based politics it has represented by necessity to justify its own existence.
You see now, in full view, the theocrats, the racists, the corporate drones, these people who think the poor are by definition lazy and stupid, the folks who champion unnecessary militarism to vicariously feel the power and control that's so lacking from their own daily lives.
Up to now, you've known them as "the Republican base". And it's slowly dawning on them that just maybe... this isn't their country anymore. The biggest mistake we make is fearing or being concerned about their rage. Savor it, because it comes from weakness. From powerlessness. From humiliation.
Those people aren't going away in November or January, but the more they lose, the louder they get, the more people will hear them for what they are. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, a former Republican and now maybe the most entertaining progressive radio host out there, likes telling one of the stories of his political conversion - when he attended some function or other with a group of Republicans and was surprised at the vitriol that came out of them when they were surrounded by "their own". He eventually decided, in his words, that "this wasn't a room I wanted to be in". And as the Republican party is radicalized over the next 4-8 years (because the coalition is falling apart whether McCain wins or not), a whooooole lot of people are going to decide they don't want to be in the room with them.
The world isn't going to change in a fundamental way with Obama's election, the nation is not going to be magically healed and enlightened, and the United States will not be instantly transformed into a progressive utopia. We're gonna see wingnuts over the next eight that make Tim McVeigh look like Stewie Griffin. But you know what? You don't do yourself or anyone else any favors wringing your hands over the ramped up "Meddlesome Priest" rhetoric of the McCain/Palin camp. So many people wanted to elect Obama in part, to show that sharp contrast, to show the rest of the world and our own history that we had learned from the disaster of the Bush administration.
Well, this, as bad as it is, is part of it.
The debate's just about to start, so I'll wrap up. Don't be discouraged when you hear or see something offensive on TV or even in your everyday life. Don't panic. Instead, be thankful that the people who feed on their worldview aren't in power. This sounds cutthoat, but it's central to world history : the strong rule the weak.
And who's been acting out of weakness lately?
We're strong. And we're winning.