My friend, Chiara, sent me this note on Thursday, the final day of the Republican National Convention. I managed to miss the note and I’m offering it now for your consideration.

Last night, my sister-in-law, Joyce, a nurse, mother of three, and grandmother of many, wrote to a number of us in the family to express her views about the presidential election.  Joyce focused on an aspect of a potential  and unthinkable Republican victory that I think few of us — certainly not I — have considered at any length.  I believe Joyce’s take on a McCain/Palin administration is worthy of contemplation and so I’d like to share with you the note she sent to us from Santa Rosa last night, at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention.

Yes, we can.

Chiara

Dear Kim, Tami, Erik, Steven, Deena, Todd, Chiara, Lucia, Kathleen and Eddie

As most of you know I am very pro Obama.  I had the opportunity to watch all major speeches for the Democratic convention and now I’m giving equal time to the Republicans.  Two very different takes on patriotism.  I was heartened by Obama, Biden, and Michelle Obama.  This week, I watched John McCain become animated over his sudden secret weapon, Sarah Palin.  I listened to the speeches last night and heard similar slurs in each one, obviously written by the same team. No lies told, but less than the truth said.  The crowd went wild. There are lots more at home who believe and will vote.

Tonight, after listening to Cindy McCain’s profile (she has been an international relief worker!!) and her well delivered speech following Sarah Palin’s rousing rendition of the republican working super mom last night, I know big work must be done if the White House is to stay in the hands of the party that I believe is more fair and balanced.

But my greatest fear is that, if the McCain/Palin ticket wins, my grandsons, Jeff, Brennan, Justin A and Justin C will be registering for the draft before the end of 2009.  Devin won’t be far behind. There are simply not enough volunteer bodies to fill the battle needs in the many places our hawk leaders feel we should go.  I was a fierce mother against the war in Vietnam when Steven was a child and I can do it again.  And be even more involved this time because watching my grandsons go off to war for oil and power doesn’t feel patriotic to me.

I’m calling the local democratic party headquarters tomorrow.  I will volunteer however they need me because I now have the time to go with my passion that the charismatic folks running on the republican ticket are defeated in Nov.

John McCain just finished the most compelling speech I’ve ever heard from him.  Almost, but not quite eloquent.  That the crowd is going wild is an indication of what’s happening in front of millions of American TVs.  Scary.

Oh woe, we have lots of work to do.  Both parties want change in Washington, but only one party wants to escalate war in several world regions.

Going forward, I’ll keep the grandson faces in front of me to remember why the war mongers cannot win.

With love,

Mom, Joyce

Does it matter that Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), is, at best, a spent force who mortgaged any ideals and principles he might have had in a Faustian bargain for the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States?

It was painful watching McCain last night and then listening to the empty suit media types prattle on about how well he did. All he has left to spout are the inanities and incoherent babble he spewed haltingly last night.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee, needs to stick to the issues. Hit them hard. Stay on message for the next 60 days talking about issues that affect ordinary Americans and how to begin to repair the damage wrought by Pres. George W. Bush and his minions. Don’t engage these idiot Republicans. Talk to the American people about the future and how he would get the nation out of the morass the Republicans have created the past eight years.

The Republicans cannot, must not win on Nov. 4, 2008.

All in your head

The McCain campaign finally rid itself of former Sen. Phil Gramm. Let’s put aside for the moment whether Gramm should be investigated and, possibly, imprisoned for corruption and economic crimes against this nation when he was a United States senator and destroyed banking in this country.

The particular comments that led to his demise (“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. … We have sort of become a nation of whiners.”) is pretty much what McCain has been saying all along, as this MoveOn.org ad attests.

Americans have a choice to make in the general election: to back a political party that has shifted the wealth of the nation from the working and middle classes to the very rich, or back a Democrat who, maybe, could protect the American way of life.

It’s a no-brainer.

Capt. Kirk for President: Bring it on!

Conflicting reports out of Massachusetts today said Sen. Ted Kennedy, (D-Mass.,) suffered an apparent seizure. I hope he recovers. He’s one of our best fighters.

It was both a tragic and triumphant time on the public stage for the liberal lion. And I’m not talking about the death of his brothers. Mainly I refer to the young woman he caused to die and the dissolution of his first marriage.

I am sharing this speech because it exemplifies both his promise and his weakness. It came at the end of a vainglorious and doomed run for the presidential nomination against a president of his own party (he was largely blamed for Jimmy Carter’s loss in 1980, although I think Carter did not do much to help himself in that race.

In giving up the run, Kennedy gave one of the best speeches in the history of American political rhetoric.

1980 Democratic National Convention Address

Delivered 12 August 1980, New York, NY

Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic Party National Convention

Thanks very much, Barbara Mikulski, for your very eloquent, your eloquent introduction. Distinguished legislator, great spokeswoman for economic democracy and social justice in this country, I thank you for your eloquent introduction.

Well, things worked out a little different from the way I thought, but let me tell you, I still love New York.

My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause.

I’m asking you — I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.

I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.

This is the cause that brought me into the campaign and that sustained me for nine months across a 100,000 miles in 40 different states. We had our losses, but the pain of our defeats is far, far less than the pain of the people that I have met.

We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.

The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political Party in this republic and the longest lasting political Party on this planet.

Our cause has been, since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the cause of the common man and the common woman.

Our commitment has been, since the days of Andrew Jackson, to all those he called “the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers.” On this foundation we have defined our values, refined our policies, and refreshed our faith.

Now I take the unusual step of carrying the cause and the commitment of my campaign personally to our national convention. I speak out of a deep sense of urgency about the anguish and anxiety I have seen across America.

I speak out of a deep belief in the ideals of the Democratic Party, and in the potential of that Party and of a President to make a difference. And I speak out of a deep trust in our capacity to proceed with boldness and a common vision that will feel and heal the suffering of our time and the divisions of our Party.

Click to continue reading…

Joshua Micah Marshall, editor and publisher of talkingpointsmemo.com, deftly and expertly explicates and elucidates John McCain and Republicans:

Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway/U.S. Air Force, via Associated Press. Senator John McCain at Baghdad’s airport on Sunday. The presidential candidate arrived in Iraq for meetings with Iraqi and American officials.

This should be an impossibility but slowly but surely you can see the swagger returning to Republicans.

They can sense that victory is now more than a possibility in November. After George W. Bush’s calamitous presidency, no Republicans should have a ghost-in-hell of a chance of coming close to the presidency.

But Democratcs are, seemingly, deadlocked. This does not help the Democrats in any way. But you’ll find no person in America more certain about McCain’s fitness to lead this nation than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He’s had “crossed the Commander-in-Chief threshold,” she famously said.

And then there’s the question of self-inflicted wounds in Florida and Michigan, Democrats’ racist rhetoric, visiting the alleged sins of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Sen. Barack Obama.

The Iraq war is five years old.

Hillary and McCain voted for it. No one would count Iraqi deaths, especially its civilian dead.

The shame of our nation.

Reasons not to vote for a Republican, any Republican but especially for president of the United States, include the U.S. Supreme Court. The
problem is that Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY), is making it very hard to vote for her if she wins the Democratic Party nomination for president.

Journalist Jonathan Chait did a re-examination (unfortunately, registration is required to read this content online) of Sen. John McCain in the Feb. 27^th issue of The New Republic. In it he recalled an interview that Mr. McCain gave Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. Mr. McCain told WSJ that he was in the process of drifting rightward in his various positions.

It occurred to Mr. Chait that he’d heard similar things from Mr. McCain before. Sure enough, when he checked, McCain had indeed told him in 2000 that his politics was evolving, this time leftward. When he asked why the change so late in his career, Mr. McCain gave a jaw-dropping answer that should have led to outright condemnation but instead is the sort of thing he says to journalists which leads them to sing his praises as a straight shooter.

“In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t pay nearly the attention to those issues in the past. I was probably a ‘supply-sider’ based on the fact that I really didn’t jump into the issue.”

Mr. Chait: At the time, this was one of the most endearing things I had ever heard a politician say. He was candidly confessing his own failure, and he left me feeling that he was bound to move closer to my viewpoint as he studied the issue more carefully. But seeing McCain offer up almost the same line to Moore—and getting the same gratified reaction—was jolting.

By making himself available to anyone with a notebook or microphone, Mr. McCain endeared himself to journalists and they willingly acted as his mouthpiece time after time. He got the benefit of the doubt and had journalists coming up for excuses for him. He is the maverick who bucks Republican orthodoxies, the conventional wisdom goes.

Except that all McCain is and has always been is a right-wing politician. The media needs to stop covering for him.