Embarracuda.

As McCain threatens to take his campaigning to new lows, the reaction of former supporters is a thing to behold.

Even Joe Klein has now dismissed his campaign as "a desperate empty embarrassment".

Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving.

And Klein is right that most campaigns, when they go negative, don't announce it first. Usually they act as if they are actually operating on the moral high ground and that they "have a duty to tell the public this important information".

McCain's camp are blatantly saying that, "if we don't go negative, if we keep talking about the economy, we will lose." It really is that blatant.

And Klein picks on the same point which Olberman hit on, that Palin is perhaps not the perfect person to accuse others of "not seeing America as we see it".

In any case, this is rather rich coming from Palin, who is married to a man who belonged to a political party--the Alaskan Independence Party--that wanted to secede from the union.

And Klein also hits on Palin's comments that Obama listened to Reverend Wright for twenty years and "didn't walk out".

So then, I'd guess, it would be appropriate to bring up some of the nuttiness that passes for godliness in Palin's religious life. Leave aside the fact that The Embarracuda allowed herself to participate in a cermony that protected her from witchcraft, how about her presence--she didn't "get up and leave"-- at a sermon by the founder of Jews for Jesus, who argued that the Palestinian terrorist acts against Israel were God's "judgment" on the Jews because they hadn't accepted Jesus.

We really are scraping the bottom of the barrel here. But, as Paul Begala points out here, attacking people and going for the charge of guilt by association, is very dangerous for McCain, as there are skeletons in McCain's closet.



McCain is on a very dangerous path, but I don't think he cares. He's always been a reckless gambler, as the appointment of Palin showed, and now he's going for broke.

What's been extraordinary to watch has been the horror with which former supporters in the press, people like Joe Klein, have greeted this latest McCain manifestation. They really did believe he was a "Maverick". They really did buy the bullshit.

It must be hard for them, because McCain "the Maverick" was in many ways their own invention. And now, like Mary Shelley, they are watching a monster of their own creation spiral out of control.

Click title for Klein article.

Tags: Joe Klein, John McCain, US election 2008, Obama, Palin, terrorists, negative campaigning