[url=http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09132008.html]Democrats in panic mode[/url]
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Democrats, exquisitely sensitized to the footfalls of defeat by the disasters of 2000 and 2004, caught the first menacing chords of impending disaster last weekend and have been panicking ever since.The hours they had to revel in the apparent success of their Denver convention and Obama’s big speech were pitifully brief. The very next day John McCain picked as his running mate a virtually unknown governor from Alaska and the country has gone Palin-crazy ever since.
Ignoring Obama’s solemn appeals for unity, America has become joyously divided. Evangelicals, braced by Palin’s Christian faith, have risen spryly from the bed of their indifference to McCain, a man whose relationship to the Holy Spirit is remote. Now their champion is an accredited bible-thumper, in whom the Holy Spirit burns as brightly as natural gas flares over the Arctic tundra.
Liberals, particularly women, maddened at the spectacle of attractive Governor Sarah embodying everything they loathe, flood the internet with frantic oaths and seize on every particle of gossip from Alaska suggesting that Palin is a hypocrite, a mismanager, a would-be burner of books, a bad mother and untrue to her man. Those scoffing only a few short weeks ago at the National Enquirer’s “mere unverified gossip” about John Edward’s affair, now hasten to the supermarkets to snatch up the Enquirer’s latest allegations about Palin and her family.
As the political news circuits began to buzz with news of improved polling numbers for McCain-Palin in the battleground states, Obama’s ascent towards the status of a Sure Bet is stalled. After the triumphs of Denver the candidate relapsed into the nerveless mode of early August. He had the poor judgment to go on the cable news show of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and make the extraordinary statement that the so-called Surge in Iraq had “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams”. He calls for 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan. Move over, Sarah Palin! You only want to shoot wolves from helicopters. Real men like Obama want more helicopter gunships to mow down Afghan kids from the air.