The Just Plain Weirdness of McCain's Implosion

It's too soon to tell -- we can't really know until 2012, or more likely, '16 -- but 2008 could be the year in which the Democratic Party is finally liberated from its Northeast and West Coast confinement.

This could be the year, that is, of an organic realignment, one similar to the staying-powered electoral swings of 1932 and 1980. Because except in the category of older whites, Barack Obama pretty much owns American demographics, and those benefits of ownership are naturally spilling into Congressional races across the country.

From women to the future-looking under-40 vote to blacks and Hispanics and now, according to one recent poll, white male independents -- yep, Reagan Democrats -- Obama possesses an expanding electoral coalition of immense, even New Deal dimensions. And the likelihood of its overnight reversal or evaporation is somewhere below zero.

That conjecture arises not so much because Obama and his fellow Democratic pols bring to the electoral table an unbeatable argument or heretofore unimagined vision. Their "change" message is doubtless part of it, yet it's the utter lack of an opposing message from a rational opposition that has cinched at least this year's Democratic challenge.

Consider, for example, that as we experience economic turbulence not felt since the Great Depression, as we continue to engage in two horrifically costly foreign wars, as we watch our fiscal balance sheet conform to Icelandic proportions, also consider the presumably serious message being robo-dialed to millions of homes by Obama's opponent: that the U.S. senator from Illinois "has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans."

Nothing says "We've got no clue" as does a final campaign like that.

In fact, Obama hopes they keep right on dialing and thoroughly missing the point.

As the Politico characterized what could fairly be called a charmed bemusement, "Obama’s campaign … seems willing to engage McCain’s attacks. In the [Wednesday night] debate, Obama all but baited McCain into mentioning his relationship with Ayers, the ‘60s radical. He mentioned McCain’s attacks before McCain brought them up."

You betcha. They're nearly the best thing Obama has going for him, because, as mentioned, nothing says "clueless" like the jackhammer concentration on what even McCain describes as a "washed-up" radical from last century's chronological midsection.

"Obama’s aides say they’re puzzled" -- more like, in stitches -- "that McCain continues to spend time and advertising money on attacks that, polls suggest, haven’t found their mark." Polls suggest? Or polls profoundly confirm?

And then of course there's the Acorn kerfuffle, which is as mindbendingly and desperately obscure as Bill Ayers' 1970s whereabouts. Said Senator Chris Dodd with encapsulating precision: "Most Americans don’t have the faintest idea of what Acorn is. They think it’s something that falls from a tree."

In short, as McCain sits masturbating, Obama is having his way with tens of millions. My God, one would think McCain & Co. would have spent at least some amount of time on conjuring a political alternative to the coming Democratic leviathan. But nope, John is holed up in the bathroom, grasping his member-ship subscriptions to the National Review and Weekly Standard -- and even they aren't as much fun these days.

But oh my, we should get off the beatin' metaphorical path, should we not?

Yes, we should. Seriously now, many thought it, but who would have actually wagered in the early summer that at the end of October Barack Obama would be embarking on the journey of a "Red State tour," eyeing the one-time Republican fortifications of North Carolina and Virginia with a transcendently realistic, siegelike mentality.

OK, maybe Va. and N.C., but how about North Dakota, or West Virginia, or Kentucky? And why not? Almost unbelievably, McCain is still pouring his vanishing resources into Pennsylvania, where he's only down by, oh, a few gazillion points.

If 2008 does turn out to be a year of massive realignment, or at minimum a temporary GOP crater, Obama will have Mr. McCain to thank as much as George W. Bush. For McCain's political incompetence has been so stunning, it's also acted as a window into his executive management style -- a telling combination of the just plain weird and, yes, "erratic."