I've been saying that this is the time America was finally ready to turn away from the phony notion that being a conservative is a good thing---go left and reject conservatism completely. I mean, it's been an utter failure and John McCain has been a big part of that failure. I've been calling on the Obama campaign to attack the ideals that conservatism apply. Not to be used like a wedge issue since he has been running on a platform of bipartisanship, (I disapprove of that also) but to point out the obvious. If a party hates government then they will prove how bad government is. And what we get are people left stranded in NOLA with no water for a week as an example of how dangerous it is.

Well, all summer we had a chance to point that out to America, but unfortunately that did not happen and now we're left watching John McCain try to remake the image of his party while he gets sucked into the conservative Borg organism in the process. And the media rejoices. He's a Maverick they say! What a guy. And if you believe the polls, the public is buying it to so far.

I've also thought that this would come down to the debates because Americans just don't know Obama all that well and when he's side by side with McSame, America will truly see the difference. It's tough to wait it out till then, but that's going to be the defining moments I think in this election unless some really bad news or crazy gaffes take place.

Digby has a great post up called: Self Correcting Conservatives. The Republicans do a great job of defining liberals and The Democratic Party lets them get away with this crap every time.

And I always felt that Democrats should have run hard against conservatism itself so that a majority of voters would reject the GOP brand no matter who was wearing it. Instead we saw airy campaigns rife with symbols of liberal progress and the promise of some new post partisan agreement that only one side had signed on to. Indeed, they have all spent way too much time for the last year extolling the other side, genuflecting to their icons and pretending that there was some national consensus that everyone wanted Democrats to stop their vicious partisanship --- when they hadn't lifted a finger. It's been maddening to watch.

So here we are. It doesn't mean Obama will lose, of course. He probably won't. Their side is even fundamentally weaker now than when the campaign began. But since both sides decided to run on personality and symbols we now have an empty campaign. McCain had no choice because his party is as decrepit as he is and their ideas are even more dessicated. But Democrats didn't have to help them hide it. If they had worked a little bit harder at discrediting conservatism itself, people wouldn't have felt so comfortable coming back to it, which is what Nate Silver thinks may have happened. There's much about the Obama campaign that I admire. But I have always believed it was a mistake to box themselves into a post-partisan trap...read on.