by Denis Campbell

When Ronald Reagan’s former Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein says, (as he endorses Barack Obama for President), “even at McDonalds you are interviewed three times before being offered a job, you don’t hire a Vice President after one interview,” you know the Straight Talk Express bus has rolled over in a ditch. When former Bush Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger says “of course she’s not ready” and says Sarah Palin would at best be an “adequate Commander in Chief” on npr Radio then walks it back on FOX saying “it was a stupid thing to say and I’m sorry” this is a candidacy in deep trouble.

Even ‘experience,’ a losing mantra for Hillary, is hanging around the neck of John McCain. You’d think with all the advisors cocooning him in a bubble, someone would say, “why are we doing what Mrs. Clinton did? She lost. No one cares about Obama’s resume or past, they want to know what you’re going to do?”

There it is, a 21-month campaign laid bare as we enter the ugly 72-hour zona absurdum. The place of swift-boat attacks, terrorist actions and bin Laden videos surface to scare the electorate back to the safety of Papa McCain (the Republican Party) vs. Mama Obama (the nurturing fix-it, kiss it, make my boo-boo better) Democrats.

Yesterday MSNBC and others said 1 in 7 voters still need to be swayed. Could it really mean that 1 in 7 are embracing latent racism and cannot admit they would be better off with a black man as their leader than a 72-year old, addled and angry, philandering, never met a lobbyist I did not like, 4x cancer survivor? 

I was reading Warren Buffet’s new biography ‘The Snowball’ last night when a quote from William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech delivered in 1896 jumped off the page:

“There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”

Trickle-down Reaganomics did not work in 1896 or 1980. They have led to excessive de-regulation and financial disaster in 2008. The arrogance and greed factors have been exposed and laid bare by the Internet and instant communication. Never again will any campaign be conducted in a vacuum. People are incensed because they now see more than overly produced news sound bytes, they’ve been digging and are very, very angry.

Angry John McCain has careened wildly across this last six month and so badly blew his only two Presidential ‘reassuring the electorate’ moments that he will face a defeat of historic proportion and watch his once proud party complete its devolution in two years to cocktail party joke. 

Sarah Palin already is one. Her support is down to 35% (3 out of 5 or 59% view her as unfit to be President), the number of those who identify themselves as Republican. This means she lost the Hillary sympathising supporters and… the Independents. Women love Obama by huge numbers. 

I’ve read three reports in the last week that suggest Palin does so strongly amongst white males not because of her policies but because she’s hot and they want to sleep with her!

Then there was the financial crisis. The economy was great then not so. John McCain was rushing back to Washington to fix it (but stopped first with Katie and upset David Letterman), then endured weeks of ridicule. He was not going to debate unless and until we had a bailout package then did without one. Then was wildly agreed to have been more of an impediment to a solution (could not even get his party to support the brokered plan) and slinked back out on the trail.

We’ve lived in an environment of fear, fear, fear for 7 of the last 8 years and the truth is it has not helped us one bit. We’ve spent a trillion dollars and have nothing to show for it in terms of infrastructure development. The Republican mantra has been to loot and starve the beast, destroy government in such a way that there is no way the Democrats can even think about doing what they want in terms of social programs. 

Well hang on to your hats Washington, real change is coming and thankfully, you will never be the same again!