I’m getting truly scared. I’m too old and poor to emigrate to Canada, but I’m terrified at the idea of having to continue living in this country after next January.
To begin with, let me emphasize that I pay little or no attention to the coverage of the campaign by the mainstream domestic media. I’ve been reading the coverage by BBC, and it’s blood-chilling. I’ve also been reading lots of liberal-progressive blogs (mostly Muskrat Hunt and The Rude Pundit). And what terrifies me is that, in spite of all the ridicule and invective piled on McCain and Palin by the left, and in spite of mounting news coverage that makes it clear that Palin is a total disaster and the Republicans should be floundering helplessly in their death throes, some of the polls which BBC tracks (based, of course, on American pollsters) show that McCain-Palin are either neck-in-neck with Obama-Biden or edging past them. One commentator says we have no one but ourselves to blame for showing so poorly because the Democrats are not doing what he thinks they should be doing to look better. It’s useless to point fingers, but obviously we’re doing something wrong, and somebody had better figure out what it is and correct it really fast. And posting attacks on Palin in leftist blogs isn’t going to do it. We’re talking to ourselves instead of to the people whose opinions we should be trying to change. The left is often accused of being narcissistic as well as elitist—just the kind of people the gun-toting, Bible-thumping rednecks loathe. They may be inarticulate and ignorant, but they’re powerful, and we’re stupid to ridicule and insult them instead of trying to reach out to them. Our ridicule and insults just more firmly convince them that they’re right.
Granted, a lot can happen in seven weeks. The trouble is, it seems to me, as a confirmed pessimist, that most of it will be bad.
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