"If You've Got an Election, You Didn't Build That. Somebody Else Made That Happen.." Charles Pierce

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/presidential-polls-tied-10821942

"I am not feeling at all well about the presidential election these days. I am not feeling at all well about all those polls that show this thing as dead even. I am not feeling at all well about all those polls that show that a good number of Americans are not paying attention to the race right now, and that they are unlikely to start doing so until long after the last pixie has flipped off a balance beam in London. I am not feeling at all well that a single reasonable remark by the president — something that good ol' Ike would have said while walking up the 14th fairway at Augusta — has been taken out of context and is now used as further evidence that Willard Romney is "punching back," as though something were missing in the puppet show. I am not feeling at all well that Sheldon Adelson is now really pissed and plans to spend Whatever It Takes. I am not feeling at all well about my fellow citizens. I think they're setting themselves to enter the fall elections in a blind panic.

Why shouldn't we? Abject, demonstrable craziness and unbridled rage has been thoroughly weaponized on the conservative side. Even the Democrats in the Congress are complicit in the apocalyptic rhetoric coming out of the Congress about a "fiscal cliff." We're being told, over and over again, that The End Is Near. By October, we're going to be hiding in the attics of our minds, peeking out through the shingles, and shooting our shotguns at what we think are alien invaders. We are going to be hungry — nay, famished for someone to blame. And, just for the sake of argument, which of our two political parties has been the most successful at creating handy political scapegoats over the past, oh, four freaking decades?

I thought so, too.

You can see them gearing up to go full-metal wingnut. Chris Christie is not your keynoter if you're going to be running a campaign of ideas. He is your keynoter if you're going to be running a campaign of VOLUME (!). Conservative pundits great and small have been quite open about the fact that we should blame not only those horrible Others who are mooching on unemployment, but also those equally horrible Others who are acting ungratefully toward the Job Creators who pay them their salaries. Michelle Malkin, the stormy petrel of conservative lunacy, already has drawn the distinction between the people "who sign the back of the paychecks and the people who sign the front." If you can treat someone's salary like a welfare check, and then sell that nonsense to the American people, then we're well on our way back to having to poach our meals from the forests of the Duke."

snip

[demgrrrll]

1. DeeDee Meyers brought up an important point today, Kerry was leading well into August, even

with all the swift boat attacks. Her point was that it took time for the Republican narrative to sink in. I have faith that Obama will run a stellar campaign. I also have faith that Romney will not.