You Want Four More Years Of Lies And Divisiveness?

All week the Blue America candidates have been telling me that their opponents have been going increasingly negative. From coast to coast the Republican Party has decided to follow John McCain into the gutter... or he's decided to follow them into the gutter-- or, more likely, they're all just going along with Karl Rove who knows better than most that when you have nothing positive to run on, you just better make stuff up. You could see the controlled outrage in Oklahoma Senate candidate Andrew Rice's face yesterday when he addressed the overflowing sewer of lies that James Inhofe has opened up against him with a series of viciously negative ads.

Mean Jean Schmidt didn't get her nickname because anyone thought she was one of the good guys, so no one was expecting her to change her ways in this campaign. But a friend in Blue Ash, Ohio was still shocked by a mailer he got from her campaign accusing Dr. Victoria Wulsin, who has dedicated her entire life to health care and public policy regarding health care, especially for children, of experimenting-- "grotesque medical experiments"-- on human beings. Even the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Malia Rulon, a quarter inch shy of being part of the Schmidt campaign, points out that Schmidt's mailer was filled with lies; I think she called it "stretching the truth."

In Minnesota brand new polls show that both Obama and Franken have leaped significantly ahead of McCain and Coleman. And the Star Tribune, the biggest paper in the state, attributes it to Minnesotans disgusted reaction to the Republican negativity.

For Coleman, there is little good news in the poll. The number of voters who view him unfavorably continues to grow, the number who see him favorably is falling, and his job-approval rating has slipped to 38 percent-- his lowest ever in the Minnesota Poll.

...The new poll suggests that one reason for Franken’s gain is voters’ reaction to the abrasive advertising in the campaign.

The survey shows that 56 percent of poll respondents consider ads criticizing Franken to be “mostly unfair personal attacks.” Only 42 percent said the same about ads criticizing Coleman.

Some of the ads by the Coleman campaign and national Republicans show Franken when he was an entertainer, cursing and ranting on political subjects. Others stress the tax and accounting mistakes of his private corporation when he was living in New York.

McCain and the Republicans have decided to spend the rest of the campaign going negative-- no, I mean really negative... negative like you've never seen before. If they can't get people to vote for them, they hope to get voters to just stay away from the polls altogether, since the uber-motivated Greed and Selfishness voters always vote and, of course, mostly vote for the Party of Greed and Selfishness. Take a look, for example at this column by a McCain campaign official in Virginia. This is what we'll be seeing, especially in the battleground states from now until November. This is the racist trash we warned would be coming last night in McCain Unleashes The Republican Smear Machine. He accuses Obama of wanting to paint the White House black, supporting reparations, changing the national anthem to the "black national anthem," teaching "black liberation theology in all churches," and replacing the flag with a "star and crescent logo."

Yesterday Michael Shear warned Washington Post readers that McCain plans a 24/7 Rovian type smear campaign against Obama. Today Frank Rich writes that McCain's vicious little pitbull with lipstick is doing more to hurt him than help him. Palin, unable to talk intelligently about any issues, domestic or international, has found her ultimate role in the McCain campaign-- everything dishonorable and filthy. The trashy crooked hack from Alaska is now on auto-repeat wherever she goes, warning voters that Obama is palling around with terrorists. It's good that they found something worthy of her character to do between now and November when she returns to her view of Russia in disgrace.

Even Rove, the mastermind behind the faltering McCain campaign, admits if the election were held today, Obama would be elected president, having clinched all the electoral votes he needs. Rove, McCain, Palin, and the whole menagerie of slimy Republican candidates for Congress, plan to create as much filth and negativity as they can to change that. But Rove's negative strategy, especially in the hands of an imbecile like Palin, may well backfire on McCain.

'Our opponent... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,'' Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

''This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,'' she said. ''We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.''

...Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee ''palling around'' with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as ''not like us'' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

...[T]hough she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

If the poll in Minnesota is any indication, and if the Republican attacks on Democrats using Obama's association with Rev Wright earlier in the year-- in three red district races where favored Republican congressional candidates backed by McCain were defeated-- are any indication, it isn't only something McCain will come to regret but something the entire Bush-McCain Party will come to regret. Today's polls from Ohio, an absolute must win state for McCain, show it slipping irretrievably out of his grasp. As McCain said himself, if all you do is run a bunch of attack ads, it shows you have no vision for the future. John McCain, more than any candidate I have ever seen in my life, has no vision for the future. I like the way Obama is answering back: