Perhaps some in the media are secretly rooting for a McCain miracle, for the sheer fun of watching everyone’s consternation. But that result would be more than another Republican victory over a Democrat; it would represent a heartbreaking setback for the nation and its hopes for getting the country out of the massive hole Bush/Cheney have dug for us.

It’s not going to happen. Not.This Time.

Yes, McCain/Palin’s most zealous supporters – perhaps 35-40 percent of the electorate? — would be ecstatic, but the rest of the country would know, deep down, that when faced with a great national challenge and an historic opportunity to get the country out of the ditch, the American people had flinched. We would realize that we were not the country we thought we were, full of hope and courage and a willingness to take on new challenges and overcome them, but rather a country still gripped by fear and still far too susceptible to appeals to our worst instincts.

The media’s rules apparently don’t allow “news” outlets to state the truth that John McCain and Sarah Palin have run one of the sleaziest, most dishonest, and dishonorable campaigns in decades, sliming and misrepresenting Obama, deliberately stoking voters’ fears and prejudices at every opportunity. Yet a large majority of the nation’s editorial boards have acknowledged this defining truth and chosen Obama.

By his own words and deeds, McCain has destroyed his reputation as an honorable maverick. His choice of Sarah Palin has revealed a convergence of reckless judgment, ambition and cynicism that make him transparently unqualified to be President. He’s facilitated his party’s final devolution into what Krugman Monday called "the party of intolerance." Enough voters know this now; they would elect McCain only if afraid and without hope. But not this time.

The signs all tells us it’s not going to happen. Not this time. Today, Americans will go to the polls, as they have for the last few weeks, and vote their hopes and not their fears. It’s as though people are saying,

I’m not sure how this is going to turn out, but we’re going to do this. I want the future to be different, for us, and for our kids and their kids. And this guy just might be able to pull it off, to show us how to come back. We’re not going to give in to our fears again.

Barack Obama said we should change the way politics is conducted, so he began with himself. He promised politics from the ground up, and now millions are organized to act. He said at the beginning, and he’s said every day since, that he would work to unite the country rather than divide it. Only Republican smears and fear mongering, Rove’s politics of division, stand in the way. They would keep us a deeply divided country, but Obama is beating them.

Some here genuinely distrust Obama’s instincts and those around him – they are complicit in the past, and not progressive enough, despite McCain’s absurd exaggerations about Obama’s “extreme liberalism.” I’ve withheld judgment, partly because I think the enormity of the nation’s problems will force the next President to seek out more humane, more progressive solutions and partly because Obama’s intellectual capacity and curiosity will drive him in decent directions. The country knows the old ways don’t work; a new New Deal is possible.

I’m encouraged that Obama defended an essentially progressive agenda on two issues where Democrats usually run to the center – progressive taxes and expanded health care –in the face of relentless (and mindless) charges of socialism and the usual “tax and spend” or "government takeover" labels. More can/should be done, and circumstances will demand that he push further, but other Democrats who tried to do that in an election lost; Obama has defended the basic argument and he’s winning.

Joe Biden was never more eloquent than in that speech. He reminds us that Obama has maintained his composure while being called every vicious perjorative in the rightwing’s depraved playbook. Obama endured it with astonishing grace; his forbearance will forever shame them.

He’s ready, and today the country will show that it, too, is ready. Most Americans are going to be proud of what we do election day. So go do it, America. This is your chance. It’s our time.


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