The November 4th writing is on the wall, many if not most never-say-die righties are admitting to the likelihood of Barack Obama’s election, and John McCain, who surely understands the math, has one decision to make: does he go down slimy or does he go down clean? Because if something terrible happens, God forbid, it’s not just McCain who will have blood on his hands — it’ll be the rightie-kook wing of the Republican party

He could decide to stop the inflammatory hate rhetoric and winking at (or certainly doing nothing to discourage) yahoos yelling “traitor!,” “terrorist!” or “kill him!” about Obama, and talk instead about vision-identity stuff — dreams and designs, can-do policies and things that have always mattered to him deep down. He could become, in other words, a Reaganesque right-wing soul man. He’d still lose, but he would at least have a semblance of honor to call his own, which he has all but forfeited since the Wall Street crisis began and he began his angry, erratic, low-road, stirring-up-the-wackjobs thing. (Not in the debates but on the trail.)
David Gergen, appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 last night [and excerpted in the video above], said that “one of the most striking things we’ve seen in the last few day, we have seen it at the Palin rallies and we saw it at the McCain rally today, and we saw it to a considerable degree during the rescue package legislation. There is a free-floating sort of whipping-around anger that could really lead to some violence. And I think we’re not far from that.”
Someone yelled “traitor!” again today during a McCain speech. Big John said nothing to calm down the vibe. He has fallen so far, so deep into the pit