Pattern Recognition, or, the Kobayashi Maru

The narrowing of the race stems from mid-July, right around the time Steve Schmidt’s influence as the new showrunner for Team McCain began to take hold. That’s when the whole “Celebrity” theme first emerged, to be clubbed over and over without reticence, and the constant exposure of the new memes (and some whipped up out of whole cloth by media whores* ) is taking points off the front-runner.

But the problem for McCain is that the numbers remain pegged at 45%. Looking at how the percentages have changed, it doesn’t appear that the Rove Schmidt offense has accomplished much beyond coaxing some wavering Rs back into the fold. And if you’re running the show for the R’s, you know that number’s never going to climb by much. The economy’s in the shitter, Iraq’s going nowhere, Osama Bin Laden’s still alive, and the incumbent Republican President is more popular than herpes but less than the clap. By rights, if you’re running the Rs, you’re trying to make sure the most padded part of your ass is what gets kicked and hope nobody holds it against you next time out.

And yet.

For Schmidt, it’s back to the Rove offense, because at this point there’s nothing else to run. If the GOP is going to win, it won’t be on issues or on the record of the last eight years, it’ll be because enough people got turned off to Obama to skip out on voting – and the GOP base got whipped into enough of a frenzy to come out in droves. Basically, Obama has to be made radioactive, which is why you’re seeing all the “celebrity” stuff. Obama is for movie stars and shallow college girls. Real Americans wouldn’t vote for that. Plus, there are enough other people down South who can pump out the racist stuff; no need for the campaign to do it.

And yet.

Basically, for this to work, Bob Barr has to be a non-entity, Ralph Nader’s army of retards** needs to be bigger than ever, the Obama ground forces need to completely flop on their registration and get-out-the-vote operation, and the political press needs to roll over and play dead. Right now, the only piece of the puzzle in place is the press (and maybe Barr).

And the big fear, if I’m running the campaign, is that this is the rope-a-dope. That Obama’s gone on vacation, phoned it in for two weeks, spent all that time on the beach watching Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt – and next week, he’s going to have a captive audience, the very forum that made his name four years ago, and a switch from “primary” to “general election,” which means the odometer resets on that whole arsenal of donors who kicked in $50 million just last month. By Labor Day, he’ll have his convention bump, a fresh start, and the promise of as much as $150 million down the stretch to sell the dream. If I’m Steve Schmidt, the thing that makes me bolt upright in bed at 3 AM is the thought that this was the best shot, and all it got was a statistical tie – and in six weeks, it’ll be back to a 150-EV loss.

Needless to say, that’s not much of a future. So if I’m running the GOP campaign, I’m going for a “shoot the hostage” play: on Thursday morning, as everyone gets ready for Obama’s big speech, I’m rolling out Joe Lieberman as the VP nominee for the GOP.

This does a couple of things. For one, it ensures that Obama has to share the headlines for the rest of the week, possibly kneecapping the post-convention bounce. For another, it provokes wave after wave of orgasmic rapture in the DC punditocracy; the idea that the brave political maverick has reached across the aisle for his VP – and not for just anybody but another maverick, the one who was the Dems’ VP only eight years ago – well, the magical unity pony will be in the barn, and if there’s one thing the press cannot help but salivate over, it’s the magical unity pony.

Now I know what you’re saying: “You’re crazy! The Republicans won’t take a northeastern Jewish liberal as their VP!” And I say: that’s where you’re wrong. Who was the first Democrat off the blocks to bemoan the perfidy of Bill Clinton during impeachment? Who was the first to cast aspersion on Hollywood and the video-game industry for their lack of morality? Who put up a matador defense down the stretch in 2000? And more to the point, who’s the most gung-ho advocate of subduing the Middle East by force? If McCain’s going to win this thing, it’s not going to be on any “culture of life,” it’s not going to be on anything economic, it’s going to be on the big-stick approach to international affairs and nothing else. And Lieberman, as the only Likud Senator, is a reliable advocate for the big stick.

Besides, remember all the crocodile tears about how conservatives would rather vote for Hillary than McCain? They’ll get over it. They always get over it, because the constant refrain at the end of the day is always “the other guys are worse.” The people who constantly complain about having to vote for the lesser of two evils? I’ll give you a hint: they’re never Republicans.

So that’s the move: McCain-Lieberman. It also pays off in one other way: it forces the Democrats to basically drop the penny as far as Lieberman caucusing with them. Making him a full-on Republican dumps the Senate back to 50-50, and irrespective of how much business the Senate is transacting for the rest of the year (not much) or what kind of provisions are already in place to handle a reversion to a split house (hint: not worth the paper they’re written on, if push comes to shove), it creates a cauldron of merry mayhem at a time when the Ds can ill-afford to have a flaming shitbag on their back stoop. Think “the Democrats are clinging to power when they don’t have a majority” and “Why is Obama not voting on the reorganization of the Senate?” and remember that the Congress has an approval rating below herpes right now.

I’m not saying it’s a perfect plan, or even a good one. What I am saying is that this is the kind of year where the GOP stands to take it right in the ass, and the only way to prevent a complete disaster is to do something to radically change the game. In this case, Trek fans***, my choice is simple: torpedo the damned freighter.

* Not gender-specific, but a shout-out to an old blog called Media Whores Online which did a good job pummeling the press for the way it bent over backwards to try to prevent conservatives saying mean things about them. Besides, specifically calling Cokie Roberts a dumb whore would, I think, be an unfair slander against the good name of whores. Whores built San Francisco and don’t you forget it.

** I’m not kidding. If you vote for Nader in 2008, you are a mental defective. This is not opinion, or rage, or abuse, it is a fact, and it is indisputable.

*** Not much of a Trek fan myself, but I needed something other than a Keanu Reeves movie that would let me employ the “shoot the hostage” angle. Look, it’s 1 in the morning and I’m trying to rage myself to sleep, whaddya want from me? Besides, you just read 1300 words of this drivel, so who’s the donkey now, wise guy?