Bigger Mistakes, Please

Via Josh Marshall, I read Bill Kristol's advice for how McCain can still win the campaign, and I certainly hope McCain will take it...along with the exact opposite advice that I'm sure he'll be hearing within the next few days. And if the past is any indication, I'm sure he'll follow all of this advice, at least twice.

And while Kristol's piece was full of good examples of what McCain's been doing wrong, Kristol's final piece of advice was perhaps the worst. It was an attack Palin should make on Obama during the VP debate based on the "opening" Obama gave by nailing McCain for not mentioning the middle-class during the last debate.

And so his big "retort" is to have Palin mention during her debate that in one of his books, Obama used a passage from a brochure from his church named “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.” And after Palin gives this long set-up for something that exactly 0.01% of viewers will understand, she is supposed to ask Biden "when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness."

And of course, this is the point in the debate when Biden laughs his ass off. But if past performance is any indication, Biden should have many such opportunities.

We're All Conservatives

It's obvious Kristol has avoided the real world for too long if he imagines this "attack" has any bite to it. As if Obama is completely hoisted for talking about the middle-class because he quoted a passage from a church brochure in a book he wrote thirteen years ago. And hell, I felt stupid even taking the time to summarize the attack Kristol was intending, yet Kristol imagines that Palin can turn this into some ultimate zinger on live television. While I'm sure conservatives everywhere would be high-fiving each other upon hearing it, most viewers would just give a "WTF?" look to each other and assume that Palin just stepped in it again.

But of course, Kristol's entire column is the product of an ever-shrinking conservative worldview that is as sad as it is delusional. Not that he really believes any of this stuff, but he has no choice but to repeat it. They all do. Their entire world has been shattering in slow motion ever since the Invasion of Iraq turned into the Occupation of Iraq. And so he has to pretend as if McCain's just not being ballsy enough and that Palin is some proven talent being wrongly muzzled.

And of course, he must act as if every American is so well-versed in Obama-bashing minutia that it'd score instant points for Palin to get a Reverend Wright reference into the debate; as if that's what voters were waiting to hear before they sided with McCain. But he doesn't believe any of this stuff. None of them do. They've admitted years ago that propaganda is more important than reality and they meant it.

And so rather than admitting they ever made a mistake, they believe that the only real mistake is not making it big enough. I hope McCain agrees.