Ooh, That Smell: McCain and His Mob Waltz with Death

by Pete Cenedella

A line of McCain supporters on their way in to a rally in Ohio heckle the Obama supporters and journalists across the street with cries of "You need to go die" and "Commie faggots," and several call Obama a terrorist, a socialist, a traitor, and more.

It's easy to view this footage and feel panic welling up inside. Easy to feel that a tide is rising in the heartland of fear and anger, ignorance and violence, that is on the verge of flooding the ballot boxes and carrying John McCain and Sarah Palin to the White House.

What's important to bear in mind is that these are hardly "swing voters." These are the 19 percent of the country who might yet call themselves "Bush Republicans," even after the verdict of history. Bush Republicans are not the concern, in the end. Reagan Democrats are. As McCain's own former top strategist John Weaver was quoted as saying: "Please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive."

What's happening at these rallies is a series of convulsions and spasms no less primordial than those we make at the end of life -- a kind of death dance. The death of John McCain, American Hero -- who may be hearing plaudits from the pitchfork-wielding mob, but who is hearing nothing but disappointment and disapproval from those Republicans and Independents who once held him in such esteem. And in the throes of that death, McCain is waltzing with a dying breed of sad old white Americans, whose tragedy continues to be their belief that those who have fleeced them were their greatest friends, and those who might plausibly have their interests at heart politically are a bunch of commie faggots. These rallies smell of rot, the stench rising from these hollow crowds carries the odor of lynch mobs and blacklisters, Father Coughlin and the Silent Majority.

But no more are these folks a Silent Majority. They are a loud, vocal, ugly minority. They are literally a dying breed. And when we write their obituary in the next few years, there really won't be a wet eye in the house.

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