trinityvixen | Biggest gaffe of the last debate

...has to be McCain playing victim of meanie liberals while saying he loves the people who come to his rallies. You know, the ones who shout out in a call-and-response with a prompt from Palin that Obama is a terrorist. McCain claims he repudiates people who say such things about Obama--any Republican who says it. So, why hasn't he censured Sarah "Obama is pallin' around with terr-rists" Palin? Or his wife with her "Obama wants my son to die" dog whistle? And its Obama who has to apologize for someone who's not even associated with his campaign thinking that McCain's discourse is low?

There's a difference between calling someone names and slander/libel. There's also the shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theater with the shouts of "Kill him!" That might be legally actionable, and the Secret Service is looking into it. McCain and Palin? Said nothing. McCain denied that Obama was an Arab. (Which is apparently diametrically opposite one being a "decent" person.) Neither he nor Palin shut down the "Kill him!" crowd. What a difference between he and Obama, who, when he started talking about McCain and started getting boos, immediately said, "No, there's no call for that." Obama said "Please don't boo McCain." McCain hears "Kill him!" and keeps talking.

Class. Some people have it, and some people are John McCain.

Other major victories for Obama:
-Stealing the frame from McCain and dismissing this noise about anyone being "pro-abortion" and bringing up the fact that sensible people should be in favor of preventing unwanted pregnancies. Since the rabid anti-choice people are just as much anti-sex as anything (for women, at least), they can't agree with that and neither can McCain. There's also McCain's really, really frightening scare quotes around a woman's "health." Did he miss that whole Terri Schiavo thing? Where people suddenly realized that actually the government determining how healthy you have to be to live or die was a bad thing? You really cannot attack health of the mother. (Not even in South Dakota.) Obama's response--can we please trust women and their doctors?--was perfection.

-The Ayers thing. I cannot believe McCain went there. I mean, I can, because the base demanded it. (Remember them? The "patriots" who go to his rallies and learned about Ayers from McCain so they had something hateful to shout?) But it was a failed proposition from the get-go with anyone not already convinced Obama's in Ayers' pockets. Because NO ONE ELSE CARES. Way to go, Obama with the "This is so much bullshit" approach and crack an egg all over McCain's face.

And no matter what the press is saying, McCain's supposed zinger--"I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run in 2004" sounded ridiculous. Because if you know your history, you know that 2004 was supposed to be Johnny Mav'rick's time, and that (shall we say "uppity"?) no-good Bush baby got off easy 'cause terrorism made him seem like less of a failure. I'm not making any of this up. McCain, like Hillary, thought that it was his time. He's paid his dues, and now it's time for him to get what's coming to him. Instead, Bush took his spot. So he waited, and for a year, it looked like Bush was so stupid and ridiculous that he was gonna be able to challenge Bush for the Republican ticket (a la Kennedy v Carter) and he'd get what was his, just four years later. 9/11 torpedoed that idea. So now he has to wait for 2008. And what should happen but another upstart little braggart (ooh, can he please use the word "uppity"?) comes along and is trying to take it all away. If you were John McCain, you'd be angry too.