PANIC!

In the wake of a debate, one expects to see both sides of the blogosphere clawing and scraping to convince the world that their side won.  Not this morning.  Instead, what we’re seeing from the right is looking a lot more like abject panic.

Andy McCarthy is the prime example:

We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case.  We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture.

Here’s what Obama needed to do tonight:  Convince the country that he was an utterly safe, conventional, centrist politician who may have leftward leanings but will do the right thing when the crunch comes.

(…)

With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side.  I’m dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so.  Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do.  What am I missing?

What you, dear reader, are missing from the excerpts above is the lamentation from Andy that McCain didn’t launch a full blown assault, painting Obama as the characterization that the right has been trying to pin on him.  But there are two points to this that I think are worth noting.  As John Cole rightly points out, McCain simply doesn’t seem to have the courage to say to Obama’s face what his campaign has been saying behind Obama’s back.   The other point is simply that Obama is not the caricature.  Maha I think sums it up nicely:

The plain fact is that Obama is no terrorist sympathizer, and I think the American people finally are getting a close enough look at him to know that. However, they are also getting a close enough look at McCain to know he is an asshole.

But I don’t think anything says panic quite like the email that Kos dug up from a McCain supporter to Mark Steyn:

Well I have gone outside and pulled up my Mcain/Palin sign. This election is over. I will vote for Mcain but I know that come Nov. 5  Obama will be our president-elect.

I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. A once promising career will be  permanently connected to the landside loss of John McCain.

I weep for my children and their families.

While many in the national punditry are saying this debate wasn’t a game changer, I find myself in disagreement.  I think if the debate did anything, it, as Kos writes, “broke their spirit.”  If the right isn’t panicking about how Obama just moved that much closer to winning the election, they are lambasting McCain for not being conservative enough.  And I don’t even think Sarah Palin can inject enough vitality back into this campaign so that it can do what it needs to do in the last weeks of this election.

2 Responses to “PANIC!”

1. radical_Moderate says:

   October 8, 2008 at 11:23 am

   Maybe the right is finally waking up to the fact that Obama’s values of tax fairness, rejection of trickle down economics, & cold war era miltarism, plus his care for the well being of the middle-class of this country are truly American values, and THAT is why Obama appears to be heading for the win.

   Reply
2. Ace Armstrong says:

   October 8, 2008 at 2:06 pm

   I think the real truth of the situation is that the Grand Ol’ Plutocrats could not have put up anyone who stood a chance of winning.
   I started to follow the ARM sub-prime meltdown in Oct. ’06 and none of this comes as a surprise. And the present economic crisis is no different in essential substance than any other financial crisis in the history of western capitalism. Unregulated capitalism will evolve to monopoly and then to oligarchy.
   The contrived consternation is only to screen the culprits. Since both political parties are subject to the machinations of the national security state wiggle room is extremely limited.
   The Great American Suburban Dream Machine is coasting to the edge of the road as the gas gage registers empty and nary a gas station in sight.

   Reply