Same-Sex Marriage Movement Hits Cultural Brick Wall

The passage of Proposition 8 in California marks the conservative movement's silver lining for election 2008. Indeed, as the New York Times reported yesterday, Prop 8 was one of three bans on gay marriage that swept the nation in ballot contests Tuesday:

A giant rainbow-colored flag in the gay-friendly Castro neighborhood of San Francisco was flying at half-staff on Wednesday as social and religious conservatives celebrated the passage of measures that ban same-sex marriage in California, Florida and Arizona.

In California, where same-sex marriage had been performed since June, the ban had more than 52 percent of the vote, according to figures by the secretary of state, and was projected to win by several Californian news media outlets. Opponents of same-sex marriage won by even bigger margins in Arizona and Florida. Just two years ago, Arizona rejected a similar ban.

The across-the-board sweep, coupled with passage of a measure in Arkansas intended to bar gay men and lesbians from adopting children, was a stunning victory for religious conservatives, who had little else to celebrate on an Election Day that saw Senator John McCain lose and other ballot measures, like efforts to restrict abortion in South Dakota, California and Colorado, rejected.

“It was a great victory,” said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego County and a leader of the campaign to pass the California measure, Proposition 8. “We saw the people just rise up.”

The losses devastated supporters of same-sex marriage and ignited a debate about whether the movement to expand the rights of same-sex couples had hit a cultural brick wall, even at a time of another civil rights success, the election of a black president.

Thirty states have now passed bans on same-sex marriage....

The victory of the social and religious conservatives came on a core issue that has defined their engagement in politics over the past decade.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor in Florida, said many religious conservatives felt more urgency about stopping same-sex marriage than about abortion, another hotly contested issue long locked in a stalemate.

“There is enough of the population that is alarmed at the general breakdown of the family, that has been so inundated with images of homosexual relationships in all of the media,” said Mr. Hunter, who gave the benediction at the Democratic National Convention this year, yet supported the same-sex marriage ban in his state. “It’s almost like it’s obligatory these days to have a homosexual couple in every TV show or every movie.”

Supporters of the bans in California, Arizona and Florida benefited from the donations and volunteers mobilized by a broad array of churches and religious groups from across the ethnic spectrum.

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, a pastor in Sacramento and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the campaign to pass Proposition 8 had begun with white evangelical churches but had spread to more than 1,130 Hispanic churches whose pastors convinced their members that same-sex marriage threatened the traditional family.

The repudiation of same-sex marriage initiatives dealt a crushing blow to hard-left activists of the Democratic Party. A number of top leftosphere bloggers were in fits of apoplexy over the "bigotry" of the turnout against gay-marriage. Electing the first black president wasn't revolutionary enough; total victory over the "reactionary" right demanded the privileging of a small but vocal gay-rights interest-group movement over the traditional values of the majority.

Digby, for example, decried claims of a victory for the "center-right":

The political implications are what the spinners will make of it. But these hateful propositions winning makes the victory bittersweet. How people can vote for the first African American president in American history, with all that implies, while simultaneously voting to discriminate against gays is testament to the incoherence of American politics and the lack of clear cut philosophy guiding people's choices. Everyone says there's too much ideology in our politics but I'd say there isn't enough. There isn't enough common sense either. Discrimination against others just because you don't like how they live their lives is against the very essence of the two pillars of America - liberty and equality. To fail to see that even as you vote for an historic, important first African American is incoherent.

Actually, it's not incoherent at all. Barack Obama's victory failed to constitute a landslide realignment in the American political culture. The precise nature and scale of Obama's win will be analyzed and debated for some time, but conservatives can rightly be heartened that one of their bedrock issues received phenomenal support at the polls Tuesday.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times, "Prop. 8 Protesters Target Mormon Temple in Westwood."

Hope and Change in the Classroom

Check out Diantha Harris in video below, a Barack Obama supporter and teacher in Asheville, North Carolina (at the time of this taping), bullying a young girl whose military parents supported John McCain for the presidency:

Here's Matthew Tabor's commentary:

Teaching is a tremendous responsibility. That’s no secret....

Ms. Harris has embarrassed herself, her school system and her profession - and in that order of importance. But what she taught 15 young kids about political discourse is the real problem. Harris showed these children that it’s acceptable [and a desirable means to an end] to abuse someone into submission over ideology; that it isn’t important to respect one’s views, or engage in discourse that furthers understanding; that intellectual diversity and dissent is to be crushed for political expedience; that a sneering, mean-spirited contempt drives politics.

We’ve heard a great deal about hope, change and goodwill over the last two years. Ms. Harris’ disgusting display undermined the efforts of folks on both sides of the aisle.

What I noticed is Ms. Harris' hostility toward Kathy, the young McCain supporter. I see here, frankly, reverse discrimination.

All of this is interesting, especially since yesterday someone who claims to have been a former student in my classrooom sent me an e-mail alleging, "after the first day of you pushing your beliefs on the class by telling us we need to support our president, I decided not to waste my time."

Check the comments here and here, where some of my actual students call baloney on that.

American Power Fan Mail

I must be doing a great job lately, as measured by the stepped-up reaction to my writing on the political left (remember the vortex?).

Here's a case in point, in this e-mail sent yesterday from "Isaac," a self-proclaimed former "student":

Dearest Mr. Douglas,

You post non-stop garbage about Obama and all the terrible secrets behind him, with paper thin proof, and the most ridiculous bias I have ever heard. You spew hatred and prejudice, and instead of pointing out McCain's positives, you point out Obama's negatives. You run your blog the same way McCain ran his campaign, and frankly, it comes off desperate and petty (and thats why the better candidate won). I petitioned to be in your class in 2003, and after the first day of you pushing your beliefs on the class by telling us we need to support our president, I decided not to waste my time. Remind me, how did that Bush thing turn out again? And I can only assume that you will support our president for the next 4 years, right?

It's obvious you are an educated man, but from the looks of it, the majority of your readers are gullible, racist, religious fanatics, that buy all the propaganda you, Fox News, and the McCain campaign is selling. To believe Obama advocates the murdering of innocent babies because he's Pro-Choice or that they would be betraying their country and God to vote for Obama. You seriously read those comments and think, "Well that is a valid point". In the meanwhile i put out a thought out, satyrical rebuttle to your laughable post, and I get banned? If you believe in your cause so much, I would think that you would refute my points, instead of deleting the posts and banning me so I don't expose your readers to the cell of a life they live in.

YES WE CAN!

I rarely delete comments or ban readers (mainly for abuse or pure stupidity), so Isaac's comments were likely as over the top as his e-mail above.

Obamania can do that to folks, so it's understandable.

See also my previous "American Power Fan Mail," here.

Code Pink, Obama Finance Bundler, Wants Iraq Reparations

Via, Gateway Pundit: Code Pink, the radical antiwar group which pledged to raise more than $50,000 for the Barack Obama campaign, has issued a statement of demands for U.S. policy on Iraq and beyond:

An Obama victory is a victory for the peace movement. It sends a message to the political establishment that being against war is the winning position. War is SO Over. American voters have recognized the costs-lives lost, international cooperation thwarted, and tax dollars squandered-and chosen the candidate who promised to end the Iraq war and to use diplomacy first....

What do we want from an Obama Administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress? We want an end to the occupation of Iraq and reparations for its people. We don't want the troops from Iraq shipped straight to another losing war in Afghanistan. We want a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. We want a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran. We want the restoration of our civil liberties and the protection of our environment. We want money to bail out homeowners who are in foreclosure because of predatory lenders. We want a NEW New Deal for America: jobs, housing, universal health care, education, roads, public transportation….We want a government that puts the needs of people ahead of the profits of banks and corporations.

Reparations for Iraqis?

I've been writing about this all year, and radical lefties have called me crazy. We'll see who's crazy in due time. Meanwhile, see my earlier essay, "Activist Groups Prepare for Left-Wing Democratic Takeover."

Obama's Middle East Roadmap

Ben Shapiro offers a troubling look at what we might expect in a Barack Obama administration. I especially like Shapiro's look-ahead to Middle East diplomacy:

Seeking to ease international tensions, Obama met directly with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Ahmadinejad insisted that the Israeli government grant a contiguous state to the Hamas-run Palestinian government, including full control of both its borders and East Jerusalem. Assad insisted that Israel concede the Golan Heights. Obama agreed with the general thrust of the demands, and suggested that the Iranian and Syrian proposals be included in a new "roadmap," to be administered by the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain. Israel has, so far, protested the plan, pointing to the continuing mass terrorism sponsored by Iran and Syria, including the use of crude chemical weaponry.

Don't forget one of Tehran's key preconditions for U.S.-Iranian diplomacy: A complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East.

Change we can believe?

Sucked Into the Douglas Vortex

My proposed blogging break is turning out to be shorter than I expected, but considering my post last night, maybe I shouldn't have expected it.

Anyway, I think I'm getting a "vortex," like Ann Althouse:

Boy, left-wing bloggers really hate Ann Althouse....

Evidently, there's a pack of bloggers hoping to catch Althouse on any slip-up, particularly when the Times has given her space [here]

Well, boy, left-wing bloggers really hate Donald Douglas as well.

It turns out there's a pack of bloggers (a small, but nevertheless vicious pack, like a wolf pack), who is out to catch me slip up.

The guys (gays?) at LGM have had me in the crosshairs for some time, and TBogg at Firedoglake posts some funny-bone slams on American Power from time to time.

But Dan Nexon's a new member of the pack, seen in his entry this morning, "Donald Douglas Goes Completely Insane:"

In private exchanges with Donald over the years, he's repeatedly discussed his use of "red meat" rhetoric to drive up his readership and implied that one should not take that rhetoric too seriously. He's even, to his credit, blogged about this--which also means I'm not inappropriately revealing the content of private correspondence....

At some level, this is all rather amusing. Donald's been on a self-styled crusade to reveal the pathological hate spewed by the left blogsphere, one in which he repeated proclaims that nothing on the right compares....

But I find it both sad and frightening....

Donald is a trained political scientist and a college teacher (by all accounts, an excellent one). He knows, or at least should know, that a 4% variation in the marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket is not the difference between communism and capitalism (John McCain does, as he said on video before the last days of the 2008 campaign), that both McCain's and Obama's policies "redistribute wealth," and... well, I could go on and on. If he does know, he has an obligation to pass this knowledge along to his credulous readers. If he does not, then there's little left to say.

Let me admit, first, that Nexon's so far the only blogger who's nearly one-upped me in debate, and he's also a respectable scholar to boot. I respect him.

But what's the fuss, really? Over this passage from my post?

Now, let me disabuse my relentless left-wing critics: Barack Obama is not a communist in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist mold, as seen in the widget above-right.

He is, however - whether folks want to acknowledge it or not - deeply in solidarity with many of the forces arrayed against the U.S. This I believe of Barack Obama: Not imminent physical destruction of our nation (though not completely discounted), but destruction nonetheless. Destruction of the moral light that never lets the malignant growth of evil roll across the land. No, America's enemies will get a respite, where they can regroup and reconsider what they want from America. There will be a reckoning, at some point, of course. Because even those who have been hoodwinked by the hope-i-ness of change will not long tolerate the yoke of Third World despotism and terror over this proud nation. A despotism seeking to behead the American individual, and the culture that bore him - all of this, dearest Americans, faster than you can say Madrid 2004.

It's true, of course: I do indeed throw out the juicy conservative red-meat from time to time, to chum the waters a bit. In fact, that's exactly why a posted the ObamaNation "Yes, We Can" Marxist-Leninist widget to the top-right of the page last night. I'm taking it down now, naturally, because I don't believe Barack Obama's the heir to Joseph Stalin.

I do think Obama's a master at disguising just how radically left he is, and how badly he wants to turn the United States in a European-style social democracy - a "brave new Omerica"- and I take nothing back from my post, especially the conclusion: "Stand with me, my friends! Fight with me! Fight for what's right for our country!"

And that's what I'll continue to do, with the effect, apparently, of building a vortex...

What's Puzzling You is the Nature of My Game...

Barack Obama has been elected 44th President of the United States. I laid out some of my earlier disappointments here, after Senator Obama won the Democratic nomination in June. Tonight, with the Democratic victory, Americans can rightly celebrate this historic milestone. Obama has achieved a phenomenal success, and it's not without the indomitable measure of his ambition and perseverance in pursuit of a dream.

Yet, the President-Elect is in many ways the least known candidate in the history of American presidential elections. The American public - simply exhuasted after eight years of President George W. Bush and his policies - has put caution to the wind and invested amorphous hopes of change and a better future in a man who has spent less than four years in the U.S. Senate, with a good two of those years spent campaigning for the very office to which he can now claim a popular mandate.

We do not know all that we can about Barack Obama. It's not for a lack of trying. Millions of bytes of digital space, and tens of thousands of dead trees, have been utilized to tell this man's story - over these last couple of years - of reaching the pinnacle of success and power in the American mainstream.

Yet, for all of this, mystery shadows our historic moment. A darkness of ignorance envelopes this candidate, his campaign, and his victory. I'm not fully in accord with Stanley Kurtz, the scholar who has done more than anyone to unearth the revelations of Obama's radicalism, when he says that Obama's been revealed for who he is:

Obama is clever and pragmatic, it’s true. But his pragmatism is deployed on behalf of radical goals. Obama’s heart is, and will remain, with the Far Left. Yet he will surely be cautious about grasping for more, at any given moment, than the political traffic will bear. That should not be mistaken for genuine moderation. It will merely be the beginning stages of a habitually incremental radicalism. In his heart and soul, Barack Obama was and remains a radical-stealthy, organizationally sophisticated, and — when necessary — tactically ruthless. The real Obama — the man beyond the feel-good symbol — is no mystery. He’s there for anyone willing to look. Sad to say, few are.

No, I differ: As we saw this last week - with the release of the audiotape of Obama's comments to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he indicated he'd "bankrupt" coal companies that refused to line up in lock-step with liberal-Democratic cap-and-trade environmental policies - much more will come out on Obama's oppositional, dramatically unconventional past. No, there's still much to be learned about this man, the man from Chicago, by way of Harvard and Honolulu, who more than any other political aspirant in our great national experiment, has slid under the radar of critical examination and everyday skepticism.

As readers know, I find a lot of comfort in music, in my considerable personal love of rock-and-roll. I'm sure I could find some classic tunes that might do justice to the moment, something, perhaps, like Bill Clinton's inauguration, when Fleetwood Mac performed "Don't Stop (Thinking 'bout Tomorrow)."

But what I've returned to is, in fact, Barack Obama's favorite band, the Rolling Stones, but not, perhaps, his favorite song, "Sympathy for the Devil," in the video above, with lyrics here (and John Lennon at 4:45 minutes, "Imagine!"):

If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste; use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Yes, that's right ... if you meet him, look out, give him some sympathy. Bow down low, "The One" is here, and you must pay due penitence for the sins of your fathers, your white fathers. If not, he'll lay your soul to waste with the phenomenal power of the American state - a state structure now to be captured - more heavily than ever before - like nothing James Madison envisioned - by the largest radical left-wing interest group contingent in U.S. history.

Oh sure, Obama will govern from the center: He'll have to, lest he risk a violent conservative reaction. But the tide has turned for this moment, and traditionalists just better hold on tight. This next four years will be unlike anything we've ever seen. Lyndon Johnson did not have the nihilist netroots blogosphere to harass his administration into conformity; and Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats weren't delivered to the progressive hordes who seek to break bread with our mortal enemies. No, things are different today. Meet the new boss.

Now, let me disabuse my relentless left-wing critics: Barack Obama is not a communist in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist mold, as seen in the widget above-right.

He is, however - whether folks want to acknowledge it or not - deeply in solidarity with many of the forces arrayed against the U.S. This I believe of Barack Obama: Not imminent physical destruction of our nation (though not completely discounted), but destruction nonetheless. Destruction of the moral light that never lets the malignant growth of evil roll across the land. No, America's enemies will get a respite, where they can regroup and reconsider what they want from America. There will be a reckoning, at some point, of course. Because even those who have been hoodwinked by the hope-i-ness of change will not long tolerate the yoke of Third World despotism and terror over this proud nation. A despotism seeking to behead the American individual, and the culture that bore him - all of this, dearest Americans, faster than you can say Madrid 2004.
My masthead is now black in mourning for the missed opportunity of victory in John McCain's moral right and history. This change is permanent, at least as far as my current state of mind dictates. The Obama Soviet "Yes, We Can" widget, above right, is temporary, and will likely come down upon the resumption of regular posts. I don't know when that will be, however. I may take just a day off from blogging, or a month or two. But rest assured, dear readers, American Power will be back, stronger than ever, to pick up the flame of moral clarity and to enjoin the ideological battle that stands before us.

As always, I'll visit and comment at the blogs of all those who visit here.

The continuity of American democracy was confirmed today. Whether the results portend a long-term realignment of party coaltions and moral priorities remains to be seen. In any case, as John McCain would say: Stand with me, my friends! Fight with me! Fight for what's right for our country!

Despair not, for the present concatentation of forces is temporary ... I guarantee it.

An Election Day Prayer

Please reflect on a most profoundly spiritual election-day essay from one of my readers, Brenda Giguere: "Election Day Prayer":

Dear God,

For weeks now I have tried to be optimistic, but in my heart I have been preparing for the worst. I pray our country makes the right choice. If we prevail it will be by the slimmest of margins. We have much work to do regardless of who takes office, but if we lose our great nation to a dangerous radical leftist, we will need to call upon all of our collective strength to save the greatest nation the world has ever known from self-inflicted mortal injury. This bad situation didn't happen overnight. I should have been paying more attention; I thought I was, but clearly it wasn't enough.

I've always loved my country, though, and never took it for granted. We are doing so much good in the world; we've achieved so much here at home. Good people are living their lives and pursuing their dreams. I've always felt fortunate to be here.

We have millions of decent people, people who want to work hard and be part of what America should be. These people do not hang anyone in effigy, even on Halloween. They do not cheat when voting or making campaign contributions. They do not cheer in approval as a candidate flips a bird during a speech, or joke about gang-raping a mother. They don't storm into campaign offices and use mace. They don't have friends who stomp on the flag or damn our country from the pulpit, or set off bombs that kill police officers on our own soil.

We have true friends who are counting on us, and can't worry about false friends that want to drag us down.

We don't laugh at common people because we are the common people, the good people.

Regardless of the outcome, I am making a vow within this prayer: I pledge a committment to my country- not an apologetic country that would capitulate to our enemies, but a country founded on the Constitution, a country strong and clearminded enough to defend it.

It's true that I'm unhappy about the huge ideological chasm that has cracked open within my own family. But I am grateful to have met so many people online, my new friends from all across the globe who feel like I do. You people are my new family, and I am making a pledge to you as well, that I will do all I can, regardless of what happens this week, to stand alongside you and be part of America's solutions as best as I can. Thank you and bless all of you.

Whoever and whatever you are, dear God, you know that my religious beliefs are essentially Christian, although you know I'm still more of a seeker than one who serves. But I will defend the Judeo-Christian core of our great government and pray for our deliverance. The good people of the world of all beliefs who try to follow your commandments need to stand together.

Thank you for hearing my prayer. People always pray when they're in the foxhole, I know, but I will never ever forget the sick and anxious feelings I felt on this day, no matter how things turn out. It's the worst feeling I've ever had in my life, not merely another election.

We have much to do.

And now, I want to make one final statement in writing. I pledge alliegance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Amen.

Your Humble Servant...

Please read more of Brenda's posts at her blog, Hollywood Does Conservative.

One Man, One Woman: Can We All Agree?

Josh Marshall's right up there in gold medal territory for sleaze this election (a close contest with Andrew Sullivan), so I'm getting a kick out of the reader backlash he's getting for Yes on 8 advertisements running on his blog, including this one right now:

One of the key arguments against Proposition 8 is that it allegedly promotes hate and intolerance.

But look what Marshall reports:

I know many of you consider this ad both inappropriate and tasteless ...

Now, some of the emails we've gotten have been very heated and even angry. I understand and respect those sentiments. I especially understand the feelings of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered readers, many of whom feel that a site they've read, supported, turned friends on to, etc., has in some way betrayed them. It really pains me to hear this. And I really wish I weren't faced with this choice. But I am. And for the reasons stated above this is the one I have to make [to continue to carry the advertisement as a matter of fairness and principle].

The "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered" readers (ayatollahs) mentioned are, frankly, just as intolerant to Yes on 8 supporters as is Iran's regime is to homosexuals.

Totalitarianism knows no national boundaries, and it's clear that the readers at Talking Points Memo don't care about the democratic process - and mark my words, this kind of reaction to a simple, automatically-generated campaign ad is just a glimpse of what's ahead for free speech under a far left-wing Obama administration, which will be completely captured by the progressive-radical interest group alliance of the Democratic Party.

You'll Always Find Us Out to Lunch...

Well, we're down to the wire of an agonizingly long election.

I think I'm pretty much tapped out on pithy one-liners and enlightened prose discursions. So, I'll just let the Sex Pistols express how I'm feeling right now, considering the (apparent) over-dermination of a Barack Obama electoral victory tomorrow. Please enjoy, "Pretty Vacant":

There's no point in asking
You'll get no reply
Oh just remember I don't decide
I got no reason it's too all much
You'll always find us out to lunch
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty we're vacant
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
A vacant...

Now before any (lefty) readers blow this off as sour grapes, remember ... I'm a political scientist, and there's oftentimes more emotion than reason in voter decision-making, as Larry Bartels explains at today's Los Angeles Times:

In 1960, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan described "the general impoverishment of political thought in a large proportion of the electorate." Shifts in election outcomes, they concluded, were largely attributable to defections from long-standing partisan loyalties by relatively unsophisticated voters with little grasp of issues or ideology. A recent replication of their work found that things haven't changed much....

Voters' strong tendency to reward incumbents for peace and prosperity and punish them for bad times looks at first glance like a promising mechanism of political accountability, because it does not require detailed knowledge of issues and policy platforms. As political scientist Morris Fiorina has noted, even uninformed citizens "typically have one comparatively hard bit of data: They know what life has been like during the incumbent's administration."

Unfortunately, "rational" rewarding and punishing of incumbents turns out to be much harder than it seems, as my Princeton colleague, Christopher Achen, and I have found. Voters often misperceive what life has been like during the incumbent's administration. They are inordinately focused on the here and now, mostly ignoring how things have gone earlier in the incumbent's term. And they have great difficulty judging which aspects of their own and the country's well-being are the responsibility of elected leaders and which are not.

This election year, an economic downturn turned into an economic crisis with the dramatic meltdown of major financial institutions. John McCain will be punished at the polls as a result. Whether the current economic distress is really President Bush's fault, much less McCain's, is largely beside the point.

Or, as Johnny Rotten might say:

Don't ask us to attend
'cos we're not all there.
Oh don't pretend 'cos I don't care
I don't believe illusions 'cos too much is real
So stop your cheap comment
'cos we know what we feel...

Anyway, thanks, dear readers, for tuning-in here at American Power throughout the year.

As always, I'll have more later... until then, vote life.

Exceptionalism: What We're Fighting For

Here's an excerpt from John McCain's essay at today's Wall Street Journal, "What We're Fighting For":

While most Americans are rightly concerned with the economic crisis, a world of pressing national security challenges also awaits the next president.

The gains our troops have made in the past 18 months in Iraq could be lost if we pull our troops out prematurely and regardless of the conditions on the ground. We have also dealt devastating blows to al Qaeda, especially in Iraq, but terrorists have found sanctuary on the Pakistan frontier among those trying to topple governments in both Kabul and Islamabad.

Afghanistan is reaching a crisis point, just as Iraq did in 2006. As an early supporter of the surge strategy in Iraq, I know that turning around this situation will require more than just increased troop levels. We also need a new, comprehensive strategy, one that integrates civil and military efforts and engages with various Afghan tribes.

Other major threats loom on the horizon: the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs; aggressive Russian behavior toward its neighbors; Venezuelan adventurism; genocide in Darfur; and global warming. And those are only the dangers that we know of. Just as few expected the Russians to invade Georgia, we remain unaware of precisely where our next crisis will erupt, or when. The only certainty is that, as Joe Biden guaranteed, the tests facing the next president will be more severe if he is seen as weak in national security leadership.

I have devoted my life to safeguarding America. Former Secretary of State George Shultz compares diplomacy to tending a garden -- if you want to see relationships flourish, you have to tend them. I have done that, by traveling the world and establishing ties with everyone from dissidents to heads of state. There is great need for American leadership in the world, and I understand that only by exercising that leadership with grace and wisdom can we be successful in safeguarding our interests.

When I am president, I will not offer up unconditional summit meetings with dangerous dictators, nor will I foreclose diplomatic tools that serve our interests. I will respect our trade agreements with our allies, not unilaterally renounce them. I will close the Guantanamo Bay prison and ban torture. I will expand our armed forces and transform our civil and military agencies to win the struggle against violent Islamic extremism.

I believe that America is an exceptional country, one that demands exceptional leadership. After the difficulties of the last eight years, Americans are hungry for change and they deserve it. My career has been dedicated to the security and prosperity of America and that of every nation that seeks to live in freedom. It's time to get our country, and our world, back on track.

As I've said many times, John McCain is unbeatable with respect to tradition, values, and protecting national interests.

After the dust settles from this election, this week, and especially in the years ahead, history will record - should Barack Obama win the presidency - the slipping away of an epic moment in our nation's journey of moral preservation and world exceptionalism.

The stakes are that high.

Chump Change for Obama: Tax Hikes on $31,850?

Perhaps more than any time this year, Barack Obama has been revealed of late as recklessly progressive on economic policy, market regulation, and tax policy.

Just one day after revelations that an Obama administration would "bankrupt" coal companies resistant to cap-and-trade mandates, the Democratic nominee, in an interview with MTV News, quipped that tax-increases on those making more than $250,000 (his threshold for the "wealthy") would be just "chump-change":

Sway [Interviewer]: Just out of curiosity, for those that are being taxed that are making more than $250,000 a year, how much difference would it be from how they are being taxed today?

Obama: Well, right now, they are getting taxed at 36 percent. Under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, they were being taxed at 39.6 percent. You are talking about a 3.6 percent difference, and for the average person who is making half a million, a million dollars, now people like you Sway, that's chump change, that's nothing. But it could make a big difference for that young person who is trying to figure out whether they can go to college or not, if we could give them more of a break or more scholarships or grants to go to college [bold added].

Depending on the total proportion of income subject to a new tax-rate restored to higher 1990s' levels, "Sway" could be paying thousands of dollars more in federal income taxes annually. To call that "chump change" is insulting to Americans who work hard for every dollar they make, citizens who see billions of dollars annually splurged frivolously on "earmarks" in far-flung budget appropriations that do nothing to improve daily lives for millions of people.

But that's not all: As Jim Geraghty reported in June, Obama voted for the Fiscal Year 2009 budget that included a restored tax rate of 28 percent (up from 25 percent) on incomes as low as $31,850.

That is, in voting to repeal by 3 percentage points the Bush administration's 2001 tax-cut, Barack Obama would reach down to an individual earning just $31,850 a year.

See also the RNC's "Obama Tax Backgrounder" for further details.

Barack Obama has claimed he'll cut taxes for "no less than 95% of 'working families'." But his actual voting record reveals an old-school tax-and-spend Democrat who will impose tax-hikes down to the average "Working Joe" struggling to get by and hoping to get ahead.

It doesn't take a lot of digging to see how truly cavalier Obama is toward other people's money.

As I noted this morning, Democratic Party activists hope to capture an Obama administration for a massive range of far left-wing interest group initiatives. Considering how friendly Obama is to radical demands to expand spending entitlements and redistribute wealth, they're not going have to lobby too hard.

Activist Groups Prepare for Left-Wing Democratic Takeover

Far left-wing activists in the Democratic Party plan to shift a Barack Obama administration far to the left of the spectrum on everything from civil rights to energy to taxes, and beyond.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, in "Liberals, Sensing Victory, Try to Pull Obama to Left," nothing is off the table:

A phalanx of liberal think tanks and interest groups - anticipating a Democratic victory on Tuesday - are mobilizing to push Sen. Barack Obama to the left of his campaign positions....

A number of the economic and social prescriptions being pushed on Obama advisers would require greater spending that almost certainly depend on raising taxes -- threatening Sen. Obama's campaign promise to cut taxes.

The Campaign for America's Future, a progressive Washington group founded by a former adviser to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential bids, is organizing a conference for this month on creating a government-funded investment fund for public works projects. The Center for American Progress recently released a two-year, $100 billion plan for producing renewable energy, and its president, former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta, has been tapped to lead the Obama transition team.

Last month in Washington, an organization recently formed by Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil-rights leader, attracted more than 100 leading activists on poverty and other social issues to a daylong conference. Mr. King demanded that the next president appoint a cabinet member dedicated to eradicating poverty. In a keynote address, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs called for substantially higher tax collections to fund government investments in energy production, public works and eradicating poverty and other ills.

Sen. Obama's energy and economic policies include many of the same goals, but the senator says he will pay for his proposals with savings from cutting bureaucratic waste and ending the Iraq war.

The Center for American Progress likewise backs higher taxes based on a "pro-growth" structure steering funds to schools, health care, job training and technology innovations. Mr. Podesta's organization is one of several interest groups working with Mr. King's Realizing the Dream Inc. to push the federal government to cut the poverty rate in half over the next 10 years. The Census Bureau estimates that 12.5% of the population, or 37.3 million people, earned poverty-level incomes last year.

In addition to Messrs. King's and Podesta's organizations, other partners in the umbrella group, called Halfinten.org, include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which has endorsed Sen. Obama and conducted a voter-registration drive that has drawn criticism from the McCain campaign, as well as federal and local investigations, for fraudulent names submitted in some states....

Some groups already have emerged as Obama advisers, such as the Potomac Coalition, a collection of African-American former Clinton appointees and Senate aides, that advises the campaign on the economy. The members, many of whom now work on Wall Street, urged Sen. Obama to back the addition of homeowner assistance and a contracting provision for minorities and women in the $700 billion rescue of the financial sector.

This report confirms something I've said all along: That an Obama administration will be captured by radical groups seeking to hijack the state in furtherance of an extremist agenda:

...an Obama administration will push an extreme-liberal policy agenda of tax hikes, spending windfalls, economic stimulus, spread-the-wealth redistributionism, universal health care, infrastructure investment, fairness doctrine, global warming legislation, restrictions on gun rights, abortion on demand, embryonic stem cells, foreign importation of prescription drugs, union card-check voting, trade protectionism, precipitous Iraq withdrawal, ban on domestic wiretapping, opposition to mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, sex-education for kindergartners, race-based affirmative action, expanded welfare entitlements, radical education pedagogy, and enemy appeasement diplomacy with no preconditions (and more).

As we can see, this agenda is by no means far-fetched.

In an essay last week, progressive agitator David Sirota pledged to battle centrist elements in the Democratic Party and to "sweep out" Clintonites and moderates from the party establishment and get a "whole new crew in there."

That crew will be filled with the very radicals conservatives have warned about all year. Democratic activists are simply confirming what has been the main ideological battle lines of election 2008.

The McCain Map

Via 538 and 411, here's the Electoral College map for a McCain victory tomorrow:

What to watch?

Pennsylvania and Virginia, in particulary, two large, coal-producing states that have seen some change in voter sentiment, now likely to be further stimulated by Barack Obama's pledge that he'll bankrupt coal producers who don't toe-the-line on cap-and-trade mandates.

RealClearPolitics currently has Pennsylvania leaning Democrat and a Virginia toss-up.

Yet, polls show a tightening race in the Keystone State, so don't count out a last-minute GOP miracle!

The Only Survivor of the National Peoples Gang...

Legend has it that David Bowie wrote "Panic in Detroit" - one of the great hard-driving masterpieces of Bowie's 1973's Aladdin Sane - in homage to Iggy Pop's tales of urban revolutionaries during the late-'60s riots in Detroit. The studio recording is miles-away better than live cuts, so please enjoy this YouTube montage featuring an iconographic history of the song's origins and impact:

Police departments across the country are readying for urban unrest on Tuesday, which may be triggered by the dramatic circumstances surrounding this year's election (a close Obama defeat with electoral irregularities is my worst case scenario for violence).

I've been listening to the song quite a bit during my morning drive-time (thinking of all the crazed Obamaniacs in a panic across the land), so now's as good a time as ever to post it:

Ah oooh...
He looked a lot like che guevara, drove a diesel van
Kept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble man
The only survivor of the national peoples gang
Panic in detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in detroit (oh oh oh aahh, oh oh oh aahh)...

I'll have more tomorrow, dear readers.

Palin Hits Obama on Coal Production

Via Gateway Pundit, here's Sarah Palin (in a Fox News segment) hammering Barack Obama for his "bankrupt" coal policy:

Washington Wire has a report:

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin unleashed a new volley against Barack Obama on a four-city tour of Ohio on Sunday by touting newly released audio comments made by the Democratic presidential candidate promising to restrict the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

The issue is particularly sensitive in coal-rich Ohio, West Virginia, and Colorado. Obama made the comments to the San Francisco Chronicle in January, which were posted on YouTube over the weekend.

Obama said that under his proposal to cap greenhouse gases, energy suppliers would get incentives to develop technologies to reduce pollution and to use cleaner sources of power. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama said. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Palin told supporters to listen to the audiotape. “You’re going to hear Sen. Obama talk about bankrupting the coal industry,” she said. The Alaska governor also pointed to comments that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden made to an environmental activist, promising no more coal-fired power plants in America. Biden was videotaped, likely without his knowledge.

“In an Obama-Biden administration, there would be no use for coal at all, from Wyoming to Colorado, to West Virginia and Ohio,” Palin said.

The Obama campaign scrambled after Biden made his comments in September, clarifying that Obama remained committed to exploring the as-yet-undeveloped clean-coal technology in order to produce cleaner-burning coal-fired power plants.

Political Punch has the text of Obama's we'll "bankrupt them" comments to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Obama's remarks are, of course, long and policy-wonkish, and in this day-and-age the Illinois Senator certainly knows better than to say something that inflammatory, especially for a Democrat.

Obama Lies to the Middle Class

Here's the video from NeverFindOut.org: "Senator Obama, Why Are You Lying to the Middle Class"?

Also, there's yet another tape floating around today, from earlier this year, where Barack Obama states he'll bankrupt companies that don't buy into his cap-and-trade energy policy (audio here):

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It's just that it will bankrupt them."

Obama's comprehensive energy plan is laid out at the campaign's website, "Barack Obama and Joe Biden: New Energy for America."

The proposal calls for an "economy-wide" cap-and-trade program, although no statistics are provided on the number of companies that will be bankrupted, or the number of Americans who will lose their jobs.

As Rick Moran asks:

Has there ever been a presidential candidate who looked forward to the prospect of destroying someone’s life’s work and costing thousands of people their jobs?

More analysis at Memeorandum.

The Political Psychology of Barack Obama

Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the CUNY Graduate Center, offers an outstanding examination of Barack Obama's political psychology at the new Political Science Quarterly.

Renshon's article is a penetrating, rigorous peace of research, and he's fair in analyzing both Obama and John McCain, laying out the implications of both candidates' psychological profiles for the American presidency during the next fours years. Naturally, I'm interested in Barack Obama, not only because I think he's far outside the mainstream of society, but also because he's such a favorite to win on Tuesday.

The introduction to Renshon's discussion of Obama is startling in its demonstration of the Democratic nominee's unbridled ambition:

To call Barack Obama's political rise meteoric may be the true definition of understatement. Born in 1961 into a racially mixed family, he spent his early life in Indonesia and Hawaii and graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He worked in New York for four years, first for a business consulting firm and then for a public interest research group. He then moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years before entering Harvard Law School in 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review in his first year, and as its president in his second year at the age of 28. He graduated in 1991 and then returned to Chicago where, in 1993, he joined the firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland at the age of 32. In 1994, at the age of 33 his book, Dreams of My Father, was published. In 1996, he won election to the Illinois State Senate and served there from 1996 to 2004, ran for a seat in the House of Representatives in 2002 and lost, then ran successfully for a U.S. Senate seat in 2004. He announced his candidacy for the presidency in February 2007 at the age of 41. The Senator has been on a very fast track indeed.

A little further down in the text, Renshon cites Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, who in an interview in 1989 relayed that Barack Obama stated early-on, and surprisingly, that he wanted to run for the presidency.

Readers should know that I read Renshon's, High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and the Politics of Ambition, during Bill Clinton's impeachment, and I was really struck then by the single most powerful variable in Clinton's self-destruction: blinding ambition. We cannot know what will happen in an Obama administration, but Renshon's discussion of Obama's drive reminds me not only of Bill Clinton's, but of Richard Nixon's as well.

Renshon provides additional background information on Obama's upbringing and training, etc., but I found his discussion of Obama's temperament rather troubling:

Calm, tempered, cool, deliberative, detached, laid-back, and serious are all terms that have been used to describe Obama by people who have known him at various periods in his life....

Obama's calm external demeanor leads to the question of what he does with the normal passions that animate people. I raise this point not to suggest that buried underneath that calm exterior is a seething cauldron of intense emotions, but to simply ask the question as it has been stated. One hint of an answer is that Obama's seemingly detached equanimity does not mean that he is incapable of tough, even harsh attacks on others. Of Hillary Clinton he said that she “says and does whatever it takes to win the next election.”

Toward Republicans, he has been even harsher. In a 1995 interview speaking of the success of Christian conservatives in building communities he said, “It's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia.” Eight years later, in speaking of Republicans more generally, he said, “What I'm certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological Republican Party that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy”....

Another question that arises with regard to Obama's stylistic equanimity is its impact on his decision making and judgment. Obama has repeatedly touted the high quality of his judgment and rests that case on what he sees as his prescient opposition to the war; “on the most important foreign policy issue of a generation, I got it right and others did not.” It is somewhat unclear, however, just how strategically accurate the basis of his opposition was. He argued that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States or its neighbors, but what about a gathering threat? His opposition was premised on the view that Saddam could be contained; others made strong arguments that containment was failing. That argument rests on plausible analysis that either side could marshal, not on the superior judgment of Obama's side of the debate.

Obama also framed his criticism of the war with direct personal attacks on members of the administration and their motives. “I am opposed to the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income—to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.” So is the basis of his good judgment prescient geo-strategic analysis or a progressive's animus toward a conservative agenda?

This passage reveals (1) that much of Obama's explicit message of pragmatism and post-partisanship is mostly a shrewdly calculated political choreography geared to winning the office of the presidency (which doesn't lend much credibility to the "change" mantra we've heard all year). But (2) the latter part of the quote is particularly informative, in that it squares with the record of Obama's positions on the Iraq war: As Peter Wehner has detailed to devastating effect, Obama supported sending more troops when the war was going badly - and while the Bush administration's policy was in disarray - but then opposed the surge of troops in 2007, precisely when the administration had changed course strategically, and when security in Iraq had improved to the point that the American goal of leaving behind a stable and victorious nation came into focus.

Thus, while Barack Obama's cool temperament may indeed serve him well as a political asset, his deliberate style and calm detachment serve to mask a much larger decision-making liability that could put national security at risk.

Renshon continues next with a discussion of Obama's substantive political positions and objective ideological orientation. Obama is something of an ideological chameleon (he's an accomplished flip-flopper on the issues), and while his bedrock positions are found to the far left of the political spectrum, his willingness to compromise his positions for rank political interest elicits the conundrum of not so much "where's the beef?" but what the heck does he stand for?, to borrow from Renshon's formulation.

Probably the most problematic issue for Barack Obama is the Olympus-level expectations he's set and the unlikeliness that he'll be able to meet them.

Renshon explains:

Among the most important and obvious skills that sustain Obama's success and ambition is his ability to deliver speeches that his adherents view as soaring and inspiring. His speech on race relations, for example, was hailed, even exalted. “One for the history books,” “brilliant,” and “unequivocal and healing” are some of the accolades heaped upon it. This praise reflects the extraordinary rhetorical skill and power that Obama can bring to bear.

There can be no doubt about the power of Obama's oratory to inspire his followers. His rhetorical skills have been noted and praised by persons from both sides of the political aisle, although there are some dissents. Some have pointed out that his charisma has the trappings of a “cult of personality.” Others, both on the left and the right, have pointed to the gap between “inspiration and substance.”94 Some have wondered whether eloquence is “overrated”....

Obama has the unique ability to offer doctrinaire liberal positions in a way that avoids the stridency of many recent Democratic candidates....

If elected, Obama will be among the youngest presidents ever to serve in that office. His resume will also be among the thinnest of those who have served. This being the case it is not easy to reconcile the record that does exist, as the most liberal Senator in that chamber in 2007, with the primary rhetorical emphasis of his campaign, which is pragmatic but transformational change. Even those last two terms seem contradictory, but it is in the gap between Obama's messianic rhetoric and his moderate, pragmatic political persona that some real presidential leadership contradictions come plainly into view.

Obama has made wide use of soaring rhetoric often of apocryphal and biblical dimensions. Building to the rhetorical climax in the speech in which he claimed victory in his quest for the Democratic Party's nomination, he said,

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...

Close your eyes and you can easily imagine Obama as a new world prophet forecasting a spiritual and political awakening. Indeed that is how many of his adherents view him and herein is an enormous problem for him, should he gain the presidency [bold emphasis added].

This is an extremely fascinating passage, because the implications of this discussion not only confirm many of the most common criticisms of "The One" from the blogosphere, but because Obama's expectations are so lofty that the actual job of governing will be tremendously complicated by the impossible rhetoric.

If the Democrats regain and expand their congressional majority - particularly with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - there will be little in the way of structural impediments to prevent the passage of landmark legislation firmly in the tradition of Great Society liberalism and beyond. Such a development will pacify the Democratic Party's radical base, but it will alienate GOP partisans who will be both marginalized and disabused of Obama's high-minded calls to bipartisanship.

In other words, for personal and political reasons, a sweeping Democratic victory will essentially nullify Obama's two-year campaign of post-partisan transformation. By seeking to transcend national divisions, an Obama presidency would risk alienating core constituencies who feel desperately aggrieved and damaged by eight years of Republican rule. But by repudiating his own claims to be a healer and uniter, Obama will radicalize the other side by confirming the expectations conservatives have had all along for a Democratic candidate baptized in the left's revolution of rights and redistribution of the post-1960s era.

Revolutionaries Must Be Community Organizers

Zombietime has published excerpts from Osawatomie, a publication of the Weather Underground in 1975:

There are serious antiracist organizers building a revolutionary base in working class communities — in neighborhoods, shops, mills, mines, social institutions. There are those who are working among women, GI’s, vets, prisoners, among youth, students and the unemployed in every part of the country. There are some who have been at it for years and some who have just begun. Thousands more are needed; and each particular piece of work will have to be linked up into a whole. We need to out-organize the sophisticated and well-financed forces of George Meany, Louise Day Hicks, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and Albert Shanker. Organizers need to crush this reactionary leadership with a revolutionized torrent of people.

There are more photo-captures and transcriptions at the link. I especially like this passage:

DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE!

Now comes a time of decision for the left. Can we overcome the small points that divide us? Can we come together to confront the enemy? Can we build a revolutionary practice firmly rooted among masses of people? Can we transform our lives in order to play our part in the developing storm?

These are the questions that press in on the left today. These are the questions because of this contradiction: millions of people are suffering from the crisis and conflicts generated by the imperialist system, and yet the left is small, dispersed and divided, not a visible force in the lives of the people. Revolutionary politics do not have a strong voice. The left is not situated to fulfill its historic mission — to focus and lead and make sense of mass discontent — to carry the present situation to its furthest limits.

...the system itself is inhuman, and socialism is a real alternative; the energy crisis is the fault of Rockefeller and the oil companies, not the Arab people; unemployment is caused by capitalism not “illegal aliens” stealing jobs; war in Indochina or the Mideast is part of the problem, not the solution; political and social action can change things.

Zombietime notes that this edition of Osawatomie was written just as Weathermen like William Ayers were making the transition from terrorism to “working from the inside” for revolution.

Meanwhile, there's no word yet on whether Ayers will be getting an assistant secretary post in an Obama Department of Education.

Proposition 8 Preserves Traditional Social Institution

Here's the new ad buy from the Yes on 8 campaign:

See also Maggie Gallagher's essay at today's Los Angeles Times:

Marriage is a union of husband and wife because these kinds of unions are distinctive and necessary to the whole society.

If Californians vote no on Proposition 8, the great historical cross-cultural meaning of marriage will be replaced by the new government dogma on which gay marriage is based: There is no difference between same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions; anyone who thinks otherwise is just a bigot.

Our children will imbibe this new dogma in hundreds of ways, and the old marriage idea -- marriage matters because children need a mother and a father, long for a mother and a father, deserve a mother and a father -- will be publicly discredited as discriminatory.

A victory for Proposition 8 will not deprive same-sex couples of a single practical right or benefit under California state laws. Civil unions will continue to provide legal protections for same-sex families. But the people of California will reclaim from four state Supreme Court justices the right to define marriage as a union of husband and wife, for generations to come.

The Known Unknowns on Racial Voting

I don't normally cite Bob Herbert of the New York Times, but he makes a good point today on the unknown shape of potential racial voting Tuesday, i.e., the possibility of a Bradley Effect:

The most significant factor vying with the economy in this election is also the greatest unknown: the race issue. The election would likely be a runaway if not for Senator Obama’s race. He’s leading, but the question is whether the poll numbers accurately reflect what is going on with the electorate.

That's fair enough, and Herbert notes that polling experts discount the likelihood of anti-Obama racial voting (and recall that some have suggested that race may actually help Obama among guilty whites).

Still, check out Mark Danner's discussion of the issue at the New York Review:

It is no accident that the largest single polling disparity between McCain and Obama voters, apart from race itself, is age. Obama's candidacy is in large part a rebellion of the young, for whom race has much less saliency, and one of the great indeterminacies of the election is how many young people will turn out to vote. Another is whether the increase in those who will vote for Obama in part because of his race—most notably, African-Americans, who are registering in large numbers—will offset or exceed those who will vote against him in part for the same reason. This immensely complex question, which goes far beyond the debate over the so-called "Bradley Effect" (the disparity between what voters tell pollsters and what they actually do in the voting booth), turns at its heart on whether race can be used effectively as a kind of "ignition switch" to make of Obama, for a critical subset of voters in a handful of critical states, a figure too culturally "different" and "foreign" and "elite" to seem in the end a plausible leader.

The potential is certainly there, for one sees persistent signs of it in everyday life. "I could never vote for Obama"—I've heard variations of this line a great many times over the last few weeks, most recently from a waiter who noticed me paging through the newspaper's political coverage. "I could never vote for a Muslim," he went on, smiling apologetically; and what struck me about the ensuing exchange was my inability to convince this man, whom I've known for years, that Obama is Christian—"He only converted when he was twelve," he insisted—or that he hadn't "changed his position, on everything, almost every day." Whether or not such disinformation is planted or actively encouraged, and however much its persistence might owe to race, it is clear that it flows like a subterranean stream through much of the country and the extent and depth of that stream are impossible to quantify.

What is not in doubt is that this substratum of concern or discomfort about race, and complementary worries about Obama as a foreigner or outsider for whom a vote would thus become a perilous gamble, have provided a prime target for Republican political and media operatives. Their delicate task in the weeks ahead will be to blend race with more traditional Republican "hot-button" "culture war" themes—worries about patriotism, elitism, sex education, abortion, gay marriage—and construct out of this mix a series of potent images and symbols intended to peel off from the Democratic coalition so-called "Reagan Democrats," conservative, often "ethnic" urban and suburban working- and middle-class voters.

Voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado and a handful of other states will likely hear much about Reverend Wright and his call to "God Damn America!" and about Senator Obama's supposed support for "teaching kindergartners about sex before we teach them to read." These thirty-second pieces of political art, whether produced by the McCain campaign itself, the Republican National Committee, or "independent" groups, will be aimed at a subset of the 12 percent or so of voters who remain undecided, and are intended to lower the numbers of those who say they look positively on Obama and "identify" with his "values and background"—numbers that, as I write, have been declining even as the candidate's national numbers are rising.

That such ads will be denounced as distortions and lies will not necessarily blunt their effectiveness, for they are directed at a narrow audience that tends to distrust or ignore the "mainstream media." They work, when they do work, according to a logic of powerful symbols and images which tend to overwhelm facts, particularly when those facts come from a world of reporters and commentators viewed as inherently biased and "elite." And they are directed at an audience—the so-called "beer-drinking" or "lunch-pail" Democrats—which, having largely favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries, especially in the critical old industrial states of the Midwest that Obama lost, may be more than usually receptive to their appeal.

Whether or not John McCain's campaign will be able to exploit this vulnerability turns on whether, among these several million critical voters, fear of an unfamiliar African-American "elitist" can be made to overwhelm fear of an extension of Republican governance that few can now doubt has proved catastrophic for the country. Obama has hammered away on the latter theme, declaring at every opportunity that "the country cannot afford four more years of the same Bush policies"—and then the financial crisis, striking like a bolt of lightning, illuminated for all to see the ruins of the economic landscape. McCain, who has been struggling to present himself as a populist (and, implicitly, anti-Bush) "maverick" who would lead the country on a very different course, understood the danger the crisis posed for him but fumbled badly in his attempt to exploit it. Even as Republicans unleash a new onslaught designed to increase his opponent's "negatives," McCain must somehow make his "maverick" argument credible, not least by joining it to a positive economic vision for the country; only thus is he likely to persuade enough voters who are disgusted with Republican policies and deeply worried about the economy—but who still fear, or can be made to fear, a President Obama.

There's a lot of doubt on the validity of the Bradley effect, but we'll know better after the results come in on Tuesday. If we see a dramatic difference in actual ballot returns compared to preliminary polling data, prepare for a long night of racial recrimination from the angry left.

Aunt Zeituni's November Surprise!

Barack Obama's Zeituni Onyango double-illegal alien and campaign donor scandal won't be enough to slow down the Democratic nominee's snowball effect.

It's great, though, that the story's getting mainstream play, in any case: Don't you know, with Barack Hussein Obama - our man! - it's a bottomless pit of lies, improprieties, skeletons (aunts)?

I must say admit that I LOVE how the story's just pissing off the left.

And keep in mind, while the lefties are alleging that the Bush administration broke the law to help John McCain, there's not a peep among the radicals about how old Zeituni successfully resisted a deportation order from the federal government, staying in the U.S. illegally on the public's dime in a subsidized apartment-unit recently refurbished with a HUD-HOPE block grant to Zeituni's Boston public-housing complex.

Folks what you're looking at is the future shape of politics-as-usual under a Barack Obama administration.

But wait! Here we see Obama thowing his aunt under the bus, and - don't you know it?!! - he's being slammed for it by the nihilists!

Man, this is going to be an interesting 4 years - and mark my words, it's going to be four-in-and-four-out for the shady socialist fist-bumping bandolier-wearing radicals taking over Pennsylvania Avenue.