The epic ugliness of the McCain campaign is even more remarkable in that it seems to me to be doomed for a basic and well-understood reason: it is simply too late to make going negative effective.

The fundamental requirement for a negative campaign to work is that you have to define your opponent before he or she does it. Obama has already effectively defined himself -- the first debate really sealed that deal. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression and all that.

The McCainiacs have to be kicking themselves -- they thought that the "success" of the surge would turn their biggest liability into a decisive plus. In fact, all the surge has done is demote the Iraq issue in the minds of voters. People have already made up their minds that McCain's worst issue is the one that is most important to them. Had they seen it coming, the McCain team would likely have run a very different campaign. But their inability to see things coming is what the election is really about, isn't it?

Unless bin Laden gives McCain a helluva present in the form of an October Surprise, I don't see how anything McCain can do now will erase this lead.

Maybe overt racism will work; it has been a while since anyone has gone there this hard. I guess we are going to find out, because, yes, they'll go there.

We’ve heard for the last many years — from the David Broders and friends — that it would be terribly divisive, awfully unfair, upsetting and disruptive, for government officials to be held accountable for their violations of the criminal law. Will these revelations — that innocent Americans were spied upon in large numbers as part of this criminal spying program — change that view?

No.

This, as Atrios often says, has been another edition of simple answers....

What will Broder et al. say? "Now is not the time to point fingers." If they deign to acknowledge the story at all, that is.

When, we might ask, is the time to point fingers?

When a Democrat is on the receiving end of said fingers, that's when.

Sancta simplicitas.

Since the dawn of the blogosphere, we have been fighting against two enemies of our democratic tradition -- the ruling Republicans and the incompetents and lackeys in the press. As in any two-front war, our effectiveness has been compromised by the way our forces have been spread thin.

Barring wholesale fraud, or the mother of all October surprises, on November 5th we will be where the Allies were after May 8, 1945 (VE day) -- unified, seasoned, and able to focus our fire on the only remaining front.

I don't want anyone taking eyes off the ball yet, but we do need to start planning for what's next -- and what's next cannot be beating blogs into plowshares; it must be putting a stake through the heart of such appallingly incompetent "journalism."

This -- exactly, precisely this -- is the logical and inevitable endgame when you combine at least one party without conscience with a stenographic media unable to let go of its addiction to false equivalence. When the media's Archimedean point is completely situational and determined solely by bisecting the positions of two opponents, the incentive to lie is overwhelming, and the penalty for exposure of the lie is virtually non-existent. The further from reality an unscrupulous player plants the flag, the better the result.

Glenn, when you pillory hacks like Dan Balz, this is one of the pee stains you should rub their defective noses in.

Dana Priest is indeed one of the most effective investigative journalists out there, which makes me loathe to come down too hard on her. And, as a statement of fact, what she said is hard to object to.

But that fact is appalling, and changing it should be our highest priority come November 5th. Once the worst bleeding has been stanched, we need to focus on healing the patient, and the journalistic norms that Priest recites are a critical contributor to our national entropy.

1. Just as the (relative) moderates seem to be peeling away from the Republican party, leaving it a friendly place for the only the most extreme remnants of the once ruling junta, much of the mainstream media is hemorrhaging audience in its own death spiral toward irrelevance in pursuit of "balance."

2. The folks who most decry post-modernism (in particular, the part about there being no objective truth) are the ones who insist on its application -- no matter if the truth is that McCain's campaign was lie-ridden, gutter-bound and incompetent; balance must be maintained!

Just hit the link to NR, and the 41 has been struck in HTML and replaced with 43.

And it only took, what, 4 days?

This happy outcome is important for the same reason that taking Homeland Security away from Lieberman should have been: proving that bad behavior has negative consequences is the best way to eliminate bad behavior.

Brennan was a shoo-in for a plum appointment. To us, his statements and behavior were beyond the pale. Glenn and others spoke up. Now, despite all of the crowing in the MSM that politicians can give "the left" the finger, what we say matters again. Maybe they will even listen enough to understand that upholding the rule of law is not even a radical lefty idea after all. And maybe we can get back to the point where political actors think twice before embracing torture and rendition and the many examples of authoritarianism that have characterized the last 8 years.

Anyway, thanks and kudos, Glenn.