I'm as staunch an Obama supporter as anyone, so please refrain from throwing eggs when I say that I'm afraid I don't share the DKos community's optimism as reflected in the 800 comments on pontificator's recent post "It's over".
A video mash-up entitled 'Is Obama Wright', while in itself inept and still waiting for significant viewership (just 38,000 views after 3 days), is the demon seed of what's to come, the prototype for what will soon be an avalanche of similar, even more powerful "proofs" of Obama's anti-Americanism.
Once a few million people have seen the poisonous Wright clips cleverly interspersed with images of Obama's hands at his sides during the national anthem, the lapel pin rationale, Michelle's 'proud of my country' gaffe, the original St. Peter-like denial of knowing Wright's views, along with a Malcolm X clip and the iconic 1968 Olympics Black Power salute for good measure, all together, all compressed into a digestible 2-minute morsel, Obama's numbers will plummet even faster than they have since Pastorgate (polls now have McCain beating him soundly in Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky). Talk of his 'unelectability' will dominate the MSM, spreading the contagion from the spin-savvy open-mindedness of the web to the TV-lit living rooms of Middle America, and low-information white voters will flee from Obama in droves.
If this happens before Pennsylvania, Clinton's chances of defeating the delegate math upon which our certainty of an Obama win has been founded since Texas/Ohio will skyrocket. She could win the remaining primaries by significant enough margins to close the popular vote gap and convince the necessary majority of remaining superdelegates to see her as the most electable Democrat. And no one will be able to cast it as a coup. She'd have a legitimate mandate.
If, on the other hand, the video and it's progeny damage, but fail to destroy Obama, and if Hillary doesn't somehow make sure that Obama's extremely vulnerable voting record on partial-birth abortion goes mainstream (sorry, but I really don't see that happening), he could still get the nomination. But come November, he probably wouldn't get the margins we need in the key swing states and would be defeated on patriotism, race and - thanks in this case to the Republicans, who will definitely bring it up if Hillary doesn't - abortion.
Either way, Hillary wins big - she's either the nominee, or she runs against what will inevitably be a disastrous McSame presidency in 2012 while she's still visible and viable, her current rival having been safely put out to pasture with Kerry, Gore, Dukakis and Mondale.
This fits so conveniently with Hillary's monomaniacal 'Either I win or nobody wins' approach that one is compelled to wonder if the Clinton people didn't secretly commission this vid, or aren't planning an even more effective one. At the very least, we can rest assured that they're giddy with delight. And best of all, they don't even have to publicly dirty their hands. They just have to sit back and let it run its insidious course.
So, what can we do? Some of you may say, openly or indirectly, 'Well, we can start by trying to staunch rather than encourage the bleeding by not posting diaries like this one, asshole!'. Others will say 'Lift him up". However, both positions are variations on the kind of denial that Obama urged us to reject in the Philadelphia speech, for they are based, like the current American discourse on race, on the assumption that if we don't talk about it, it will go away. Moreover, they assume that the Hillary and McCain camps are not already fully aware of all this, and also ignore the untamable viral power of the very same vehicles of information that have made Obama's campaign what it is.
Yes, we must continue lifting Obama up, with even more vigor than before, but our effort will be ineffectual if we approach it with the contrived optimism of so many cheerleaders - you can't defeat an enemy by refusing to count his troops and weapons. We must brace ourselves for an inevitable negative groundswell that will rise in inverse proportion to Obama's numbers, and hope that our candidate will be able to continue demonstrating enough of the same extraordinary wisdom, transparency and political dexterity that we saw in Philadelphia to stem its force.
Sorry to be such a killjoy. I hope at least some of you will agree that we'd be foolish to deliberately avoid preparing for the worst-case scenario, particularly now that it has become rather more likely than it was just one short week ago, if only to make the disappointment even a fraction of a bit less soul-crushing should it come to pass.