No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Decline and Fall of the Brutish Empire

One of my new liberal friends here in Pasadena has mentioned that several righties have asked him, what will happen if Barack Obama loses? Will there be mass rioting, violence etc?

At this stage, it looks like the only way Obama can lose is if the election is rigged, a very real and worrying possibility, which is why we cannot take victory for granted. But the number one rule for parsing anything the extreme right says is that they always accuse you of the dirty tricks they themselves are doing. That's why they are making so much noise about non-stories like ACORN - to distract attention from their massive voter suppression efforts. It's also to give themselves a handy crutch for their denial and paranoid fantasies if and when John McCain loses. They can't accept that McCain is just an unattractive candidate - old, cranky, out of touch with everyday concerns, and unable to present any new ideas or offer any positive vision. So the narrative they are preparing, which will be eagerly embraced by the "liberal media", is that Obama stole the election!

Perhaps the extreme right is already preparing a lawsuit - Son of Bush v. Gore - to nullify the result and crown McCain as president despite losing. It's also very likely that they have already written articles of impeachment against Barack Obama, to be presented the minute he takes the oath of office, as they were planning to do in 2001 if the Supreme Court had let Al Gore's victory stand.

One thing's for certain, the racist right will never accept Barack Obama as a legitimate president. They will spend every minute that Congress is in session with a never-ending series of petty sabotage and obstructionist antics designed to tie the federal government in knots and prevent anything positive from being accomplished. It'll make the Gingrich campaign during the Clinton years look like a campfire rendition of Kumbaya. Our only hope is that the rethugs will lose so many seats, they will be reduced to something like the irrelevance they deserve. (And that the next Speaker and Senate leader will have something resembling a backbone and stop enabling their childish and destructive tantrums, unlike Pelosi and Reid who rolled over for every despicable rethug shenanigan.)

Another certainty is that Obama's administration will be marked by constant death threats and conspiracies by racist extremists. Some will be penny-ante stuff with no real chance of success, like the recent skinhead incident, but they will have to be investigated at a cost of time and resources. Others will be sophisticated and extremely well funded and organized, and will benefit from inside help from Bush regime holdovers. Barack Obama and his family will have to watch their backs every minute. Can they trust the Secret Service and every one of its agents? The next few years will be fraught for the family.

The extreme right has spent the last couple of decades and billions of dollars creating a well-oiled hatred machine. Switch it on, focus it on the target du jour, and everyone from the punditocracy to the mindless masses of the "base" instantly becomes consumed with mouth-foaming rage and hatred, and jumps up and down on cue with synchronized shrieking fits of the vapors about Valerie Plame, or Graeme Frost, or whoever the current target is. It's like a Two-Minute Hate that never ends.

But anyone who has watched a grade-B horror movie knows that when you create a Frankenstein monster, the monster inevitably gets out of control. The rethugs cannot wash their hands of the hatred and racism they have so cynically cultivated over the years. If Obama should come to harm, his blood will be on their hands.

It's not enough for John McCain to make meek noises that Obama is a Christian family man and not a Muslim. If he had any integrity as an American and as a human being, he would stand up to the racists who flock to his rallies, kick them out, remind his listeners that the Constitution explicitly forbids making a candidate's religion (or lack of it) an issue, and tell people to decide between him and Obama on the issues. Of course then he would be screwed, because he is on the wrong side of every issue.

But McCain has said he'd rather lose an election than a war. Leaving aside the fatuousness of talking about winning in Iraq - how does the US win another country's civil war? - there is now a different war to consider; the war everyone must fight in his or her soul for whatever decency and integrity one possesses. Sadly, all the signs are that McCain flunked that particular war long ago, in his fervor to take the presidency at all costs.

I've known all along that taking back Congress and the White House would not magically wipe away the incredible damage done over the last eight nightmare years. It's only the first step in a long, hard battle, and the lunatic right will be fighting a crazed rearguard action all the way. Still, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Next Tuesday we will take that first step!