"I know so many people who were seriously mentally distressed after the last election. I've thought that some of them might become suicidal if we lose again. I can't even speak to anyone who supports McCain, it's to hard to wrap my mind around why anyone would think that way. "

Here in mustache-twirler land, we have been calling your condition "Bush derangement syndrome." I guess soon we will soon have to rename it, say, "McCain Madness."

@Golby260

"Give me a good reason why we're being "deranged" or "mad" about Bush or McCain. Give me a really good one."

The reason you liberals are in full meltdown right now is that you have become used to defining your entire identity as being tied to government, and specifically to the most centralized levels of it you can find. So, when the "wrong" candidates win, it's a personal affront to you.

To save your sanity, you need to consider the possibility that intelligent life exists inland from the coasts and beyond your ward-heeler downtowns. Okay, so you have no interest in starting a small business and pressing close to people who might actually shop at Walmart, but ultimately it doesn't matter what kind of interests you have. There are places where you can create art without a grant from Washington. You really can write in Wisconsin or support opera in Dallas without prearrangement with the UN. Even if you're a public policy person, there are thousands and thousands of communities where you can occupy local office without being a Republican or a Democrat.

You still have time to create yourself a life.

@EHJ

You're missing my point. Your post is not an example of meltdown, but just a collection of disagreements on the issues. This is what a political campaign is traditionally all about.

Look at the rest of this thread. Notice how large a percentage of the posts are nothing but semi-literate screams, the modern equivalent of letters to newspapers handwritten in all-caps with green ink. They are from people who are actually on the edge of mental breakdown because their candidate is a few percentage points behind in the polls as McCain oushed/Palin enjoy a post-convention bounce. And it's not Republicans who have pushed Obama out of the news since the DNC, but the endless stream of articles in fora like this one claiming that Sarah Palin eats babies. You people earned our undying contempt back in 1991 when you hauled your great-granddad's Liza 'n' Jefferson jokes out of the closet to use in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Please don't go on embarrassing yourself again on Palin.

If Democrats want to win, they need to focus on issues that voters actually care about. Instead of trying to block energy projects public and private, why not campaign on busting the healthcare monopoly? Medicine is so ridiculously overpriced because rent-seeking cronies have been successful in making open competition illegal through every stage of the process, from drug development to hospital care. But no - the Washington crowd loves its patents, copyrights and licensing, so neither party is about to let consumers shop around for medical care as freely as they can shop for TV sets. Joe Biden still loves the DMCA.

Why don't Democrats make the lousy state of customer service an issue? This would be massively popular. When airlines treat their customers like crap, the open market works just as it's supposed to: flyers shun the bad carriers and they lose business and file bankruptcy. Unfortunately the rent-seekers win again as bad airlines go to Congress for another bailout and another chance to screw customers all over again.

But no. Democrats don't have time for issues like these because they would rather focus on such esoterica as civil rights for terrorists. If Democrats like Roosevelt and Truman had thought this way, we would all be speaking German today.