A friend of mine just returned from a trip to Michigan. She reported to me that, in the Lansing area, McCain signs abounded. Michigan has a Democratic Governor, Jennifer Granholm. The City of Lansing has a Democratic mayor, Virg Bernero. But McCain's campaign apparently looms large in the city of the Oldsmobile brand.
I try, at times, to empathize with Republicans. At least the rank and file ones that I believe have been sidelined by the Bush crowd and that family's nearly Shakespearean obsession with power at any cost. Not to mention the damage done to that party by the creationists, who will hopefully stay home on election night, having never been too cozy with McCain. I wonder if real Republicans see where they went wrong. That was in not choosing John McCain back in 2000.
John McCain's time has come and gone. The noble soldier who, at some intermittent points in his career, actually was a maverick, had to sit back and stare, dumbfounded, as his party chose Bush over him. Bush, the know-nothing, do-nothing, back-slapping frat boy: in. McCain, the great war hero and US Senator: out.
Maybe McCain believed, as Hillary Clinton perhaps believes about her own recent race, that his primary opponent would lose the general election, setting up a run in only four years. In fact, Bush did lose to Gore and the Supreme Court decision that selected Bush as President cost McCain his chance to run in 2004. Bush's eight years in office have been a national (and international) nightmare. They have also been the passing of John McCain's last useful years as a presidential candidate. Although many leaders in the Republican party believe that the GOP can run anyone for office and their supporters will fall in line, whether they are qualified or not (look at the California governorship), many Republicans I know believe McCain is done. And Palin didn't help. Palin is a charming and facile woman. But she was a devastatingly poor choice for VP. She will probably cost the GOP the election.
Add to the list of things destroyed by the Bush family the presidential hopes and dreams of John McCain.
On another note, another friend turned to me recently and said, "If Obama is elected, we will have witnessed something truly great in our lifetime." I agree. We will also witness, I would argue, the death of the civil rights movement as we have understood it these past sixty years. The last, great obstacle to meaningful racial equality in America will vanish, and with it, the yoke, real and perceived, of the limitations of the black experience in our country.
Many things are changing in our society today, even dying. With Obama, we not only accept that change, we seek to turn it into a positive.