At the time Michele Bachmann was spewing her stupid hate on Tweety’s show yesterday, the ActBlue page for her challenger (Elwyn Tinklenberg) was standing at around $4000. I checked it again a few moments ago, and it’s now at $104,000. That means that $100,000 was raised (just on ActBlue!) for him in a bit over twelve hours!

Go team!

(And yes, I kicked in some of my own money. Have you?)

But trying to quantify when McCain jumped the shark is a matter of trying to find the point where you just can’t forgive his actions anymore. I mean, Hillary jumped the shark plenty of times — and I could make a post pointing out that her research into Ayers, for example, has been used by McCain. Hence her campaign has hurt Obama in the general election — except it hasn’t. Largely due to the utter tanking of the stock and credit markets. Were the economy better we might be singing a different tune, but as is.. No matter what Hillary did during the primary, it wasn’t enough to hurt Obama now; so she’s forgivable.

As for Hillary’s supporters, though… Most of them are forgivable. Even Talk Left (though I’ll never causally read that site anymore). But when SusanUnPC at NoQuarter started relying on racists to defend Hillary in March, that was the point of no return for me. There’s no apology for that.

So at what point are McCain’s actions unforgivable? I heard chatter on NPR about McCain thinking of his legacy at this pont, and how he won’t attack Obama with Wright because he doesn’t want to foster racism if Obama is going to be the first black president (which, as any objective look will tell you, that’s in all likelihood right now). Which could be considered honorable, but…

When did McCain cross the line of forgiveness? Is it when he attacked Obama for having a mansion?

Is it when we found out that one of his foreign policy advisors was connected to Iran?

Is it when persons unknown distributed the “Obsession” DVD to 28 million voters in swing states, while at the same time the McCain campaign tried painting Obama as a terrorist?

Or is it when McCain and Palin rallies became hate filled mobs and neither candidate seemed to give a shit if their supporters were shouting things about Obama like “TREASON!” or “KILL HIM!!” ?

In fact, all of these are good starting points.

Any way you look at this, and no matter what you choose — whether it’s a point I listed or something you think I omitted (which, I assure you, is by accident), McCain has crossed the point of forgiveness. He’s jumped the shark, and for doing such he deserves to be punished. This isn’t the same man who led a bipartisan group of senators to keep Senate filibuster privileges in tact and I, for one, well never trust him again. He’s not a maverick, he’s just another fucking wingnut now.

So instead of asking where’s the point that McCain jumped the shark, a better question might be does it even matter anymore? The dude has fucked up much…

icruise: there HAS been massive incompetence in McCain’s campaign. It’s been quite stunning to watch, especially since — for once — it hasn’t been on our side. Perhaps we learned our lesson with the Swiftboat Veterans Against Kerry (or whatever they ended up being called), but I’m sure that Obama’s cool political savvy has been a huge factor in showing us the way out of the wilderness.

Let’s all hope that the Republicans stay in the wilderness themselves for many years to come; there’s a lot of cleaning up we need to do!

Probably never should have got it up and going again.