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Last week, on the second or third night of the Democratic Convention, I wrote a little bit about my skepticism about Barack Obama. I forget exactly what my point though because now it absolutely doesn’t matter. Essentially, my thoughts on Barack were basically that he a.) he kind of seemed to be drinking his own bath water b.) did not have the fortitude or political expertise to win the election. In light of the speech he gave on Thursday night, I’m no longer worried. The guy’s brilliant. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said on this, except that no one has ever used an acceptance speech to so thoroughly and effectively take the fight to the opposition like Barack did. It did everything it needed to do. It was heroic.
So, as if he wasn’t going to spend the remainder of the campaign responding to what Barack said on Thursday, things have gotten even worse for John McCain. No doubt he hoped his unveiling of runningmate Sarah Palin would usurp news coverage from Barack leading into the Republican convention. Palin is, after all, only the second woman to ever be on the bottom half of the top of a major party ticket in American history. But instead, attention was immediately diverted by the fact that she is completely inexperienced and unprepared to vice president (and therefore president if the 72-year-old McCain [happy birthday, by the way] croaks in office), is under investigation for corruption and has a pregnant 17-year-old daughter. Oh, and they had to rework the entire convention schedule when a massive hurricane just barely missed New Orleans. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why severe weather in or around the Big Easy doesn’t make for winning politics for the Republican Party. It’s like Friday rolled around and McCain was like, “Fuck it. I’ve had enough of being a viable contender for this thing.”
So what goes around comes around, as the saying goes. The political pendulum seems to have swung, the conservative moment passed. I’ll check back in on this when the GOP convention over and the week of nonstop footage of young prison-camp McCain has run its course, but I’m pretty sure the train has left the station on this one. If only we could fast-forward to November 4th. We would have to endure a lot less bullshit.
