So we're down to the grand finale. Barack Obama and his troops have John McCain chasing his shadow in a slew of formerly red states and to make matters worse, the Arizona Senator is being outspent by over 4 to 1.
Obama who originally agreed to public financing, has reinvented political fundraising by following Howard Dean's forays into the internet and shooting them up with roids. Now he owns the airways in a slightly Democratic year, after the economy tanked and Lady Sarah fell from grace. McCain, who came back from the dead in the primaries, is hammering away at his rival with a fist full of shoddy nails. McCain can't sling mud like Bush, (even with the second string from his campaign), because it's really just not in him. Otherwise, Jeremiah Wright would be the poster boy of a racially divisive campaign that played into every epithet of the seriously bad ole days. But McCain can only call his challenger a socialist and try unsuccessfully to make Joe the Plumber into an everyman.
With the economy well beyond quick fixes, layoffs rising into the thousands and foreclosures hanging over individuals and the financial future of an endless number of neighborhoods, name calling just aint the answer in 2008. The world is a little extra bent this year with snow in October to greet what hopefully will be a Phillies victory.
Beyond the Route 1 corridor and the Beltway we are bogged down in two wars with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran becoming increasingly belligerent each in their own mysterious way. And we are faced with debts that stagger the imagination and make the likelihood of any of Obama's high priced programs, (like health care for almost all or tangible alternative energy development, or meaningful education reform) being enacted on top of all the economic sleight of hand that will be necessary to stop the bleeding and dig us out of what appears to be at best a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious recession highly unlikely.
The Middle East is playing their usual game of 3D chess with the Israelis about to enter new elections, Hezbollah and Hamas waiting to play a wild card and Shimon Peres saying we are closer to peace than any time in the last hundred years. If you can figure that out you will be able to qualify for either a Nobel Prize or federal drug rehabilitation. The topper may well be Senator Stevens guilty verdict which could actually bring the Dems a filibuster proof majority. It seems to this blotchy-eyed onlooker that the only hope for America and the world is that after Obama wins he makes his left flank eternally angry by building a real unity government. I'm not sure anyone has the magic bullet for our financial, political, developmental and military woes, but if Obama looks beyond the glimmer of his coronation squarely at the State of the Union, he'll reach out across the aisle as fast as he can and ask for all the help he can get.
