I am afraid.

[rivka]

I've had a creeping sense of unease about Obama's rise in the polls. He's currently leading by 6 or 7 points nationwide, but he's got a stronger lead in multiple key battleground states like Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia - so much so that my favorite polling analyst Nate Silver puts his odds of winning close to 94%. (And Nate Silver is the guy who predicted last spring that the Devil Rays would go to the postseason, so whatever your concerns might be about his partisanship, you have to concede that he understands statistical projections.) Even the conservative polling-analysis site Real Clear Politics concedes that they expect Obama to win even if he loses every single state that is currently considered a tossup.

Where does my creeping dread come from? Partly, I confess, it's because I've been following politics long enough that I never understimate the power of the Democratic Party to screw things up. But I'm also concerned about what seems like the lack of any effective campaign strategy on the McCain side. It confuses me. Whatever else I might think about the Republican Party, I have never for a moment doubted their political effectiveness. They're good at winning. I may decry their campaign techniques (may, hell), but I have to concede that they are very, very successful campaigners.

So what's going on with their apparent lack of a ground campaign? Why is McCain lurching around on the economy, putting out weird proposals and then withdrawing them? George Will pretty much sums it up for me - and I'm quite certain that will be the first and last time you ever hear me say that:

Time was, the Baltimore Orioles manager was Earl Weaver, a short, irascible, Napoleonic figure who, when cranky, as he frequently was, would shout at an umpire, "Are you going to get any better or is this it?" With, mercifully, only one debate to go, that is the question about John McCain's campaign.

What freaks me out is the fear that this is not it. That what we're seeing direct from the campaign is not what they think will make them win. That they are playing a sub rosa game directed at the absolute darkest strains of American politics.

What freaks me out is seeing people start to couple Barack Obama's name with Yitzhak Rabin's.

Do I sound like a nutbar conspiracy theorist? I probably do. But consider:

• Fox News presented a documentary about Obama in which the assertion was made, and left uncontested, that Obama was essentially a member of a domestic terrorism sleeper cell "in training for a radical overthrow of the government." The expert commentator who made these unopposed claims is on record as being a paranoid, delusional anti-Semite who is "one of the most notorious litigants in the history of the United States" and who has called for a Constitutional amendment to seize and redistribute all property owned by Jews. Yet he was presented as a credible expert on Obama's background and intentions, on a mainstream news network.



• The official state chair of the Virginia GOP instructed volunteers to link Obama directly to terrorism, according to Time magazine:

  With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary."

  What is perhaps the most frightening thing about that story is that the Time magazine reporter wasn't undercover at the volunteer training. She was invited to attend by the McCain campaign. (More on this story.)



• McCain refused to disavow or distance himself from those instructions.



• The rhetoric at McCain-Palin rallies is increasingly violent. McCain has long since stopped his early policy of reprimanding supporters who emphatically call out Obama by his middle name. His single attempt to repudiate the worst excesses of his rally crowd was anemic. Frank Rich lays it all out in the New York Times:

  At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option. [...]
  
  What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.
  
  By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.
  
  That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

The Rich column connects the dots for anyone still reluctant to do so after examining the amassed evidence:

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands. [...] We’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder.

I am afraid. I would love to have someone explain to me, convincingly, why I shouldn't be. But at the moment I'm not sure that anyone can.

Updated to add: I will be deleting any anonymous comment that is not signed. If you want to comment anonymously, please put your name at the bottom of your comment - preferably (although I don't require this) with a link to some established online presence.

Comments

[ailbhe]

I've been hearing about effigies hanged from trees - has McCain been speaking out against these, publicly, on national television? Because I haven't heard that he has. From here, which is not culturally similar and I know it, that's a huge omission. Over here, he'd be expected to condemn it loudly and repeatedly, as representing one of the two main parties (obviously the BNP wouldn't but they are not a main party).