How to Defeat the Republicans in the 2nd Election This Year or, Why Funeral Directors Live in Big Houses

The Republican model for the last three election cycles has been ingenious: when their candidate is losing the public debate on the issues, they, in essence, declare that election over and the next one begun. Recall in 2000 when Gore had apparently gone ahead, having smashed Bush on the issues of the day? Rove and gang simply decided that since they had found that they could not win with the electorate on those issues, they would change the subject and win on the new ones they chose.

Remember the second debate, when Dubya announced that he was firmly against nation-building and criticized Gore for Somalia and the Balkans? Even with the "new" election invented by the Republican strategists of 2000, though, the race was close enough that they had to steal Florida's electoral votes. By 2004, the strategy had become a tactic, to borrow from General McCain's lectionary, and the vote-stealing machine of the Republican Party was much more adroit and subtle. As Bush took his lumps for the mess he had made in Iraq and the rest of the world, Rove, et al were gearing up the most effective smear campaign yet waged against a national candidate. The coordinated Swift-boating of Kerry, the double trap laid by the leaked supposedly forged documents showing Dubya's cowardly shirking of duty turned the "second election" into a popularity contest, won easily by the affable dunce called Dubya.

Now, as Obama forges what looks like a solid lead nationally and in the key electoral college states, the Republicans are gearing up the machine to destroy Obama on a personal level. We already "know" he is secretly a Muslim, because the Bible (Internets) told us so, and now we are told that because he lived in the neighborhood also inhabited by a 60's radical, he has been hanging with terrorists. We can't debate the issue that most of the 60's radicals were vilified and demonized by the establishment intent on carrying out an unjust and horrible war and that those same "radicals", the one Palin/Rove tag now as terrorists, are quietly and patriotically working in neighborhoods and communities all across America, trying to effect healthy change from within the system. We can't even debate that, because to do so would be to side with "the enemy". So, accepting the false premise that this guy was/is a terrorist, we will watch as spokespersons try to use facts to combat emotion, a battle that funeral directors happily fight every day. The McCain campaign apparatus knows that if it can make the second election, the one that really counts, about the candidates and not their records nor their stance on issues, McCain and Palin might just come out ahead. He is a hero. She is a hottie. Obama is a Negro and knows some Muslims and is not one of us.

Get ready for a re-run of 2000 and 2004: 100% negative, 100% of the time. The bonus? If things get dirty enough, the casual voter will stay home, shrinking the base numbers, allowing the haters, the racists, the people who "really care about the country" to speak with exaggerated voices.

Is there a solution? Yes. Obama and Democratic candidates need to coordinate fiercely the message that the alternative to Obama is not a heroic soldier and Paris Hilton Palin, but financial ruin.

The use of fear is legitimate, when the fear is already there and is genuine. Americans are afraid that blind adventurism in Iraq and unfettered access to the keys to the Treasury by the money-lenders has left them bankrupt and powerless. We can show them the way out of the mess, but not by letting the argument be about someone's middle name or the color of their skin. We proved that when we forgave Bill Clinton his sexual peccadilloes in return for good financial stewardship.

If Obama and Democratic candidates will seize the economy as the base issue, every day, and in every way, from now until November 4, even the race issue will evaporate in most voters' minds. Every time that McCain and Palin run a negative ad we should say, why are they attacking our candidate on issues that have nothing to do with paying the bills, getting health insurance and health care, implementing a fair system of taxes?

When Obama and McCain debate this week, Obama should confront McCain and say: "Why did you promise that what my former minister said, that I repudiated, was 'off-limits' and now your campaign is using it, through your running mate, to try to smear me? Is it because you realize that your entire record of supporting George Bush in dismantling the greatest economy ever is going to cost you this election and you need to change the subject?"

We can win the Second Election. Let's get started. Looks like our candidate has: