Just heard George Will question McCain's judgment and behavior on ABC, and Sam Donaldson say the American people must begin looking at his age as a very real factor in whether or not he should be president.
Honestly, for the life of me I can't understand why anyone with any integrity - ANYONE - would vote for McCain, and adding that dimwit but incredibly devious Palin to the ticket sure didn't bring anything valuable to their case. (There are people with no integrity who will vote for McCain - the Republican ideologues and Wall Street types who game the system under Republican rule, but the reason they are voting for McCain needs no explanation.)
So I'm playing a little mental game with myself, using my Ph.D. in psychology and my analytic skills regarding human behavior to try to understand why, indeed, any non-elite ordinary American would ever vote for this insane ticket, with a man showing clear signs of dementia and erratic behavior, and a woman who knows absolutely nothing about American governance and policies other than what she can recite like a parrot, trained in talking point sessions with McCain stooges.
Here's the top five reasons why I think an average American voter might choose McCain.
1. Blind loyalty to the Republican party and seeing elections as nothing more than games between two teams. Some people see the parties as akin to sports teams in which you root for your team no matter how bad the pitcher or the quarterback, and you hate the other team, no matter how brilliant the players. Of course, when you remain loyal to your team, you have nothing to lose but your hope for the season, or the occasional bet with friends, but when you see the election as nothing more than a team sport, you could actually lose your entire country. For some reason, this doesn't enter some feeble minds, which leads me to the second reason.
2. Stupidity and brainwashing. People who fall for advertisements that lie, or carefully crafted sound bites that mislead have been conditioned for decades by their passive couch potato acceptance of the "truthfulness" of television advertising. People who are not interested in history and past events which can be instructive, or who don't see how they are being manipulated with political ideology, or religious dogma that seeks to fool them. People who get all the political education they are interested in from Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity who lie, distort and present only one side of any story. Conservatives have been brainwashing people for decades, ever since the sainted Ronny Reagan came on the scene to provide cover for their anti-people policies, appealing to hate and jealousy, and it still works with some, regardless of how awful the Republican candidate is.
3. Racism. A lot of people this year will not vote for Obama because he is black (he's also white, but in this country one drop of "black blood" means one is black and most people can't accept the probability that all of us have mixed racial backgrounds.) Racism still is strong among some people who have the need to look down on others, and the Republicans have made a number of dog whistle type ads that exploit this. The viral emails falsely accusing Obama of being "Muslim" are simply thinly disguised racist attacks. While it is no longer politically correct to hate blacks, it is perfectly acceptable to hate Muslims, many of whom are also dark-skinned. Isn't that an interesting coincidence?
4. Religion and abortion. I am amazed anew during each presidential election cycle at how religion inserts its ugly head into our politics. You may be offended by my use of the word "ugly," but like our Founding Fathers, I see how dangerous it is to insert religion into our elections. Pastors who are supposed to stay out of politics to retain their tax exemption, routinely tell people they must vote for the Republican for a variety of reasons, but two stand out the most: abortion and homosexuality. (Israel and ushering in the rapture are up there as well.) Evangelical Christians, especially of the radical fundamentalist, pentecostal, dispensalionalist rapture-ready variety have made a pact with the devil: the Republican Party. Why have they done this? Who knows the real reasons - it may have to do with money or power, but the ostensible reason is that Republican candidates keep pledging to overturn Roe V. Wade and ban gay marriage, which of course they never do and they never will. Republican economic policies are unpopular with a majority of the people and we now see the fruit of those policies: tax cuts for the rich and for oil companies and companies that ship jobs overseas, and massive deregulation of almost every industry has led to: stock market tanking, jobs shipped overseas; banking industry ruined; destruction of the middle class; and the nation's economy on the verge of a major collapse. So if we looked at the economic policies alone, no one but some elites who have made out like bandits in this mess would ever vote for the Republican. Enter Pastor Phil, or Father Bill, or Pope Benedict, or Bishop whatshisname who say: you must vote Republican because only Republicans will stop abortion and put gays back in the closet. Oh please! If Republicans ever did these things they would lose their base because then people would look at other issues. So while a few conservative Republicans like Douglas Kmiec, who has written on why Obama is a better choice for those who oppose abortion, might have woken up to the sham, most people are still taking the bait. Oh, and by the way, the number of abortions goes down in Democratic administrations and up in Republican ones. Why? Because Republicans focus only on a legal stategy to overturn Roe (which won't actually stop any abortions) while Democrats get busy addressing the reasons women resort to abortions: lack of birth control, lack of knowledge about sex, and most of all poverty.
5. War and the POW card. How many times have we heard in this election about John McCain and his courage as a POW? This appeals to the pro-war crowd, especially those who are still fighting the Vietnam War, and are most enthusiastically behind the Iraq War. You see, these men think we have to "win" in Iraq because they believe we "surrendered" in Vietnam. They don't see the immorality of both wars, because all American Wars are sacred to them. They are the same ones who condemned John Kerry who showed bravery in Vietnam, and who voted for Bush, even though he went AWOL at home. Kerry ultimately opposed the war, while Bush never did, and that is what mattered to people who feel questionning one's governement is somehow unpatriotic, regardless of the first amendment. These people are single minded in their America right or wrong mentality, and they support McCain as a warrior who agrees with them. To some people, notably those who cannot see the Iraq War for the immoral war that it is, a war that people supported on the basis of lies from their government, John McCain's unflinching support for the war is admirable, as admirable as admirable as his courage as a POW. They are still caught up in the trauma of a war from the sixties, a war that the American people ultimately rejected, and they must find a way to redeem themselves and absolve themselves of the violence they engaged in during that horrible war. McCain is their champion, representing something heroic about Vietnam, and no matter how old or out of touch, how senile or simplistic he is, they are behind him, the country be damned.
I know this isn't a charitable interpretation of the American people who support McCain. I know how unfair it must seem, but this is a crucial election, and people need to wake up. They need to see that the reasons they are voting for this man and his completely unqualified, but darling of the radical religious right, sidekick, are irrational. I don't expect them to see the light and change. I can only hope that there are enough educated, thoughtful, cautious, and mentally stable people in this country to outnumer the team players, stupid and racist voters, religious radicals and old men lost in the era of Vietnam, and reject him and his party - for the good of the nation we all love.
