The Electoral Apolcalypse Grows Nearer

With news like this and this, any Democratic candidate ought to be strolling towards election to a four-year residency in the White House this November. And yet at least one major poll shows that this is not the case at all and that the Republican candidate John McCain is not just still in the game but surging forward.

Sure, US presidential candidates do traditionally get a "bounce" in the polls during or after their own party conventions. But these are no ordinary times, with what ought to be a perfect storm of economic meltdown; the biggest energy crisis in over thirty years; huge numbers of home repossessions; looming environmental catastrophe on an unprecedented scale; and, finally, an unpopular and seemingly never-ending war, all presided over by the most corrupt and incompetent presidential administration in modern American history, if indeed not of all-time.

And yet, between McCain's choice of a vile and extremist running mate and the re-ignition of the "culture wars" so beloved of Rove, Gingrich and Robertson, the GOP has somehow managed to right the Titanic, at least for the moment. And should the polls remain close going into election day, who would seriously bet against another massive electoral fraud on behalf of the Republican Party for the third consecutive US presidential election?

Liberals and progressives have been ripped in the press for having an insulting and condescending attitude towards the kind of small-town, conservative voters who have bullwarked the GOP through its 40-year rise to and (fingers crossed) fall from power.

The conviction by the left that the right is stupid is one of the defining and least attractive characteristics of contemporary politics. Assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is too dim to get your point is not itself a particularly brainy way to win others over to the essential correctness of your views.

Quite possibly true, but if the Republicans can pull this one off, either by hook or by crook, then it will be difficult to argue how an electorate that consistently votes against its own economic interests in sufficient numbers to allow the Republicans victory - or, in the absence of enough GOP votes, once again allows an election to be brazenly stolen - can be viewed as anything less than semi-lobotomized morons. And dangerous semi-lobotomized morons at that.

Time, as ever, will tell.