Heavy Metal Palin Lot

David Weigel | October 9, 2008

Get-a-camera-and-talk-to-freaks can be the lowest form of journalism. Do the people who show up at McCain rallies hate Obama more than your average schlub? Of course. Will they say silly things if you ask the right questions? Sure.

Still, this video by an Ohio liberal blogger is bloodcurdling.

Via Jonathan Martin, who says "it's difficult to imagine even the most hard-core conservatives saying that Al Gore or John Kerry were terrorists." This is a huge problem with the McCain campaign's negative turn. No swing voter took offense if a Bush surrogate called Kerry a limp-wristed, French-looking fraud. But I think they wince when they hear someone accusing Obama of terrorist "bloodlines." The guy still has a net 18-point favorable rating. People simply don't look at him and think "radical." The velocity with which the McCain campaign has become a political arm of Sean Hannity's America makes it look ugly and desperate, rather than strong, as Bush I looked when he mocked Dukakis or Bush II looked when he mocked Kerry.

UPDATE: Oh, God.

This is the blowback when McCain/Palin go hard negative. They rev up the base, but what on-the-fence voter wants to associate with people like this? It reminds me of the collapse of the illegal immigration issue. Yes, a majority of people told pollsters they wanted "secure borders," but once they started associating those opinions with beer-bellied Minutemen snooping around the AZ-Mexico border, or mouthbreathing radio hosts like Michael Savage...