Things are looking good for us Democrats right now. The Romney campaign is clearly in a death spiral. They are running an incompetent strategy featuring an unqualified and horrible candidate. Republicans down-ticket are fleeing from him for the first time this week.
The President has regained his footing, and his campaign - thus far - has been flawless. Our Democrats around the country are on the ascendancy and we look much better to hold the Senate and take back the House.
This is great, right? Well, yes it is. But there is one more hurdle, and it's not the debates.
As many folks (including myself) have posted on this site for years, the Republicans do not view elections as civil debates. To them they are weaponless civil wars. In short, they will do just about anything to win.
And all analogies about cornered rats and sinking ships aside, this year's GOP has lots riding more riding on victory. Look at their efforts thus far this year: They have stoked the birther movement (clearly), they have clearly lied about several pillars of their argument against the President's re-election, and they have launched a concerted effort to prevent Democratic leaning voters from voting.
And now, now with Romney having almost completely self-destructed thanks to his lack of concern and clear hard-core belief in wedge politics, they are ramping up to make sure they don't go down without a real fight.
You can already see it - the Republicans are stoking the idea of their own video of President Obama talking about redistribution of wealth (although - unlike Willard's video - there's is edited).
They are going to throw it all at us. Think of the kitchen sink strategy, but on steroids. The money merchants behind the Republican machine clearly have a vested interest in winning it all back - regardless of their reasons - and they will do anything to get it.
They clearly have no scruples and plenty of ad money to play their amoral game with. We may even Reverend Wright back, TV ads that throw back to the racially charged GOP ads of the 1980's, and more. After all, once you've gone down the path of lies, it's pretty easy to retrace those steps.
As long as we're ready it won't work. We cannot let it work. It's clear America has had enough of this crap - we just need to be sure that they vote against it.