Good - McCain is wasting money running that ad in a venue he has wrapped up anyway. Wright is old news - it will inflame those already inflamed and be ignored by Obama fans... Maybe one or two undecided (who have to be dense to be in that camp) will be swayed.

Republicans whining about the failure of Democratic partisans to take "personal responsibility" is laughable. Given our political history, anyone who claims that Specter's remarks were a reference to anything other than the Bradley effect and racial polarization is being disingenuous. John McCain has run a divisive campaign and these rallies are simply a continuation of the major theme he and his intellectually bankrupt running mate have sounded for several weeks. Racism (implicit or explicit)is the most consistent message they have articulated during the campaign. Ultimately, given the utter incompetence of the McCain-Palin effort, it may be their only hope.

Please spend the 30 seconds to read this.

I have read so much and said little over these many months. I am almost 60 years old and now living outside the U.S. borders because I am a corporate dinosaur. The cost for a company to offer me medical insurance, (at my age) outweigh what they feel I can offer. It is easier, and more prudent, for ‘BIG BUSINESS’ to hire 3 recent college grads (for what they would need to pay me) who will be ‘yes men’, rather than hear what my 25 years of international business experience has to offer. The height of irony is that when I taught at a major University some of those now corporate executives where my students. I spent 6 years in Viet Nam only to be spat upon when I returned. But I spent those 6 years so those people had the right to spit upon me. Look at the struggles your father’s and your grandfather’s went through. If there is no work where you live – move to where the work is!!!! Don’t sit and wait for someone else to help you. That is not how we were born and that is not how we grew to become who we are today. They suffered hoping you would not have to. They went to war hoping you would not need to. It is time to look back into your own personal history. The ‘American Dream’ is alive and thriving around the world. If you don’t believe it, just spend some time outside our borders. AMERICA IS NOT THE NEXT FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE! I am AMERICA, I am not proud of everything I have done, but I am damn proud of who I am. But remember freedom isn’t free!!! When this election is over, ‘suck it in’, ‘pull together’ and ‘show the world’ what it is to be AMERICAN!!!

Signed, an old war-dog -- 10,000 miles from home.

Thank God the truth tellers are at work in these letters, warning us about hypnotism and even worse: Barney Frankism! Everything that's gone wrong in the last eight years is secretly the fault of that fat, Jewish gay Congressmen! Fat Jewish gay people want to control America! That's why they picked as their figurehead a skinny black straight man so nobody could tell! Prepare to evacuate to Alaska and take shelter with Sarah Palin!

McCain's campaign is simply being its usual ugly self.

This article clearly shows the Republicans for the racists they really are. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated for nothing; he, too, should have been a racist.

Obama just took the American flag off of his 757 when he did his half million dollar overhaul. He put his own symbol on the tail. He can do that but he should have waited until after the election. He received illegal campaign contributions from his aunt who is here illegally, but when it became public he gave it back yesterday. Obama always says or does the right thing after he is caught or simply denies it. You know kind of like all of the people in prison say they are innocent.

I'm really, really scared for America in the days immediately after the resounding Obama victory to come this week, if the level of batsh*t insanity on display in some of these letters and in the responses traister wrote about are at all representative. What will the wingers who *believe* with all their hearts that Obama is hypnotising people and raising an army do if he's elected? I pray they run around and scream a lot - I fear they start burning books and buildings and killing people.

The fact that you view Specter's comments as "...hoping for racism.." says much more about you, than him. Let me lay it out for you:

-Folks who don't PREFER Obama because he is a socialist/marxist leader who wants to "level the playing field", or because they aren't keen on the idea of a "civilian defense force" aren't going to reply with "no" vote for Obama to a pollster for the reason that they don't want the pollster, or anyone else in ear shot to *THINK* they are doing it out of race.

-This is because the left-wing media phalanx of propaganda has caused a self-consciousness bordering on neurosis about expressing ANY preference for ANYTHING other than Obama-ness out of fear of looking like a racist.

-This results in the absurdity of polls that are non-reflective of the true choices folks are making.

-Thus the press will bring about the opposite of what it is aiming for...by pushing against something (McCain), the press will bring it into reality.

LOL.

Keep on believing that McCain is going to win - at least until Wednesday morning. It's been possible for you guys to live outside the reality-based community on issues like Iraq and climate change because the consequences are far away and you can always watch Fox, but no amount of denial can change who is president later this week. Hope your meds kick in in time to prevent a meltdown...

What is it about Rebecca Traister's articles (and Broadsheet writers in general) that makes all the fucking lunatic right wingers come out of the woodwork and fill up the comments? Is Salon being linked by Drudge and Limbaugh now? Seriously no other Salon writing on similar topics has the 70 or 80% of letters be 'Obama's a Marxist' like this one... I feel like I'm reading Slate's letters not Salon!

Good work Rebecca, and like someone else already wrote - I hope to hell that when Obama wins in a few days that the right wing just retreats into their paranoid world and doesn't lash out and kill him or any of the rest of us that don't think that the world is 6000 years old and that the best policy decisions are War, War, War, and eliminating social security and taxes for rich people...