Quote of the Day

"Does deploying these ads at the last minute really seem like a move from a campaign that feels confident it’s going to win? These are some of the ugliest and most dishonest attacks of an unusually ugly and dishonest campaign. They’re the kind of ads you expect from a secretive outside group, not the campaign itself. They’re the kind of ads a campaign keeps in a glass case labeled, 'Break in case of emergency.' They feel desperate."

-- Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald on the rash of almost unimaginably dishonest last-minute campaign ads from the Romney camp and what they may say about its state-of-mind heading into election day

Romney's spent the past several months running the most brazenly mendacious campaign modern politics has ever seen -- one that goes far beyond the kind of pernicious spin we've come to expect from political candidates and into the realm of flat-out, easily debunked, staggeringly audacious lying. The idea that he could get any worse than he's been since the campaign began in earnest is kind of tough to wrap your head around -- and yet it's happening. When you lie so bombastically that the very people you're attempting to endear yourself to begin not simply calling you out for it but publicly saying that your surrogates who spread the same lie are "full of shit" -- that's when you know you're a scam-artist who's making the most desperate and cynical play for power the American people have probably ever seen in any of their lifetimes.

Quote of the Day

"Liberals are a famously skittish bunch who seem eager to bail on a candidate at his or her first sign of trouble. Republicans, on the other hand, stood by Romney (often grudgingly) during months of losing and nonstop humiliation. It’s difficult to imagine Democrats doing the same for Obama, given the eagerness to tear out hair after one lousy debate performance."

-- Alex Seitz-Wald in today's Salon

Jesus, where have I heard this kind of sentiment expressed before -- over and over again?

Most liberals are, by their very nature, prone to panic attacks and they always seem to be looking for an excuse to question everything they believe in. They're overly analytical, distrustful and condemning of the very figures whose politics they purport to embrace -- particularly if those figures happen to eventually become leaders, given that authority is corrupt by its very nature and is therefore always to be questioned -- and generally pride themselves on their unwillingness to be the sloganeering automatons from that other party, the ones that get behind a candidate and stay there at all costs often winning them elections and policy battles.

They seem to truly enjoy getting their asses kicked -- or at the very least being able to fret over it, post-mortem.

This is why, I have to imagine, it's a hell of a lot harder to be a Democratic politician than a Republican. Being a Republican is easy, especially these days. You adhere to a set of strictly enforced talking points and you stay there, wavering only, perhaps, when your ass is in such a sling that you have to say anything to get elected (see: Romney, version 27.0). Being a Democrat means you have to try to appeal to a wide swath of people guaranteed to either sit defiantly in a corner like babies because you're not pampering them and the singular pet issue they've chosen to hang their entire vote on or at the very least bail on you while screaming, "I told you so," at the first sign of trouble.

It's gotta be like herding cats.