On the eve of the election, let me post a socialist view of this race. I watched the final debate
with a friend, and it was clear to both of us that Obama had won, if only because McCain had
so clearly lost. Obama was calm, while McCain was an old and angry man.

Barring some remarkable shift in the polls, Obama has won the campaign, very possibly by
a landslide. I've been chided with an email from a fellow radical because I don't view McCain as
a war criminal, and that is an interesting part of the McCain campaign that is worth a look.
War is a crime, no matter who, when, or where. It was Sherman who said, of his march through
Georgia in our Civil War, "war is hell". General Omar Bradley said, after World War II,
"Aggressive war is a crime. But defensive war is also a crime. The problem is sometimes
we don't know what else to do".

Warriors like McCain take great risks on behalf of their nation - and in doing so they are no
different from the Soviet and Nazi troops in World War II. I'm all for having a war crimes trial
for those who organized the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, as we tried the Nazis at
Nuremberg - but I view the men and women who fight these wars as victims of the system.

I was surprised McCain made such heavy use his time as a POW in Hanoi. There was nothing
heroic about his bombing Vietnam. There was nothing heroic about his being held by the
Vietnamese - it was simply McCain's bad luck that his plane was shot down. I do not question
his patriotism (though one should not forget Samuel Johnson's line that "patriotism is the last
refuge of the scoundrel") but I have never understood why his time in a prison in Hanoi
qualified him for being President.

The sad thing about McCain is that, much as the left may hate him now, he is not a hateful
man. But his campaign has profoundly diminished him, particularly the effort to paint Obama
as a terrorist by his limited association with Bill Ayers, and his strange effort to portray Obama
as a socialist. McCain will lose more than the election - he will lose it as a man embittered by
what he has done in his effort to win.

Nor is McCain a maverick. That term - "maverick" - comes from the Maverick's of Texas,
a family with a proud history of dissident left politics. The late Maury Maverick Jr., who
died in 2003, a Texas politician and attorney, carried on the family tradition by
defending civil rights protestors, communists, Vietnam war resisters. The Maverick family
is reported to be unhappy that McCain and Palin has sought to abuse the family name.

What defines McCain is that he is a man who, in real life, knows few "Joe the plumbers"
(except as he or Cindy hired them to repair plumbing in one of their many homes). McCain is
a man who is part of our military caste, whose ancestry is military, and who, until he became
a politician, was protected from the insecurities of working Americans who had to worry about
medical care or housing. Since marrying Cindy, he has also been a man of considerable
wealth. A man of many homes and cars, at ease among the very rich, rarely in contact
with the middle class - or the working poor.

How out of touch McCain is with the American people has been highlighted by his repeated
talk about "the American dream" being that of small business. Very few Americans have the
dream of running a small business. America is a special nation, born free of the caste system
of Europe, so that Americans can dream (if they are in a dreaming mood) of becoming
anything, from a dentist or a lawyer, to opening a restaurant, to being President, or, for
most of us, hoping for a job that has some meaning, can provide the money for a home,
medical care, the chance to get kids through college, and permit a decent retirement.

It isn't that small business is bad - as a socialist I think small business is good, a kind
of spice in the corporatized American nightmare. The irony is that socialists aren't the enemy
of small business - capitalism is. Starbucks isn't a small business, it is a corporate monolith
which has driven neighborhood coffee shops to the wall. The friendly neigbhorhood drug store
has long since yielded to the corporate networks of the chain stores. The local
hamburger joint has been replaced by MacDonalds or Wendys.

This was just one of the remarkable "disconnects" between the McCain campaign and the
American reality. It is easy for a socialist to see that when McCain warns the broad public
that Obama will increase taxes, he is really warning the very rich that the tax breaks they
didn't need in the first place will be taken away and that those making less than $250,000
may get a tax break.

Watching the last debate I was fascinated with the way McCain dealt with the Colombian trade
deal. When Obama noted that trade unionists are being murdered in Colombia, McCain
dismissed that without a rebuttal - after all, the murder of trade unionists is, for a supporter
of corporations, one of the sad costs of doing business. Where McCain lamented Obama's
"ties to terrorists" I wondered not only about his association with G. Gordon Liddy, who comes
close to being a certifiable nut, but his whole range of casual associations with networks
of right wing guys who clearly had a hand in terror in Central America.

Terrorism is, like other things, a matter of class. Palin was hesitant to label as terrorists
those who bombed abortion clinics. (And of course, it was McCain's choice of Palin for the
VP spot which most dramatically and fundamentally ruled him out as a serious candidate
for President - if a 72 year old man with a history of cancer would choose Palin to be
next in line . . . ).

I did understand the anger, the barely repressed fury, of McCain during the debate. There
is, on his part, a visceral dislike of Obama. And you or I might feel this also, if we were
being outspent ten to one, if the tide of money had moved from the GOP to Obama.
(And that shift is part of the "Mandate of Heaven" having fallen - big money has made a
choice both as to who will win, and who they want to win). And you or I might feel a
certain bitterness over the bias of the media. McCain, who once counted on the media
for good stories, put up curtains on the Straight Talk Express.

What worried me most about McCain's campaign was the ease with which he substituted
blind patriotism for a coherent political program. The chants of the crowd of "USA, USA,
USA" were too much like Germany in the early 1930's. Oddly, I didn't see a flag pin on
McCain in the final debate, but the relentless "Country First" signs waving everywhere
in the crowd had, as with the chants, an alarming echo of earlier times and other countries.

John Lewis had no reason to apologize when he warned that Palin was stirring the crowds
in such a way they could become a mob, and violence might easily be the result. Did
Palin understand this? I think McCain did, and tried too late to edge back. (It is to
McCain's credit that, at least as of this writing, he has not revisited Rev. Wright).

McCain feels, as Hillary Clinton felt before him, that Obama is an empty suit,
a man who speaks well but has a thin record. But the nation is angry, and disillusioned
long before the financial crisis. The America of George Bush, which McCain supported
uncritically until the last ten days, shamed us before the world, with torture, with
the abuse of the constitution, with an unnecessary war which has cost thousands of
Americans lives and tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Bush's America is
summed up with a single word - "Katrina". And now, of course, recession.

It has been an interesting time, this contradiction between an administration which has
ignored the restraints of the constitution and democracy, and a media which has used
the very limits of free speech to mock Bush. "We" - the opponents of Bush - have the
Jon Steward show. We have the comic strips. We have the late night TV hosts. Bush
has no defenders beyond talk radio and Fox News. We certainly had our share of
mass demonstrations opposing the war (not that they did any good!) - Bush and
Cheney could not muster a single good demonstration in support of it.

McCain plays heavily on his support from veterans - ignoring the reality of how many
veterans from Iraq, from Vietnam, support Obama. As the campaign winds down
we see the small crowds for McCain, and the large rallies for Palin, almost entirely
white - and almost entirely working class. That fact - the support McCain still
has among many white workers - is a dismal reminder of how easily the realities
of class conflict can be ignored in an America which has never confronted the
issue of class, and where working people can be mobilized behind flags and
patriotic slogans to vote against their own interests. (It is interesting, as we
watch the Palin phenomena, to realize this is the first election in memory where
the head of the ticket is less popular with his own party than the candidate
for Vice President).

As the Chinese used to say, when an Emperor fell, "the mandate of heaven has
fallen". Surely the mandate of heaven has fallen on Bush, and taken McCain down
with him. It was not simply that Colin Powell endorsed Obama, but that he went
into detail about such matters as the choice of Palin, and the fear of Muslims.
Nor was Powell alone (though Rush Limbaugh insisted it was all a matter of race),
since a stream of conservative intellectuals has come forward to break with McCain
and endorse Obama - including the son of the late William F. Buckley Jr. And of
course Obama has even gotten the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune!

Night has fallen on one of the shoddier campaigns in our history. We will have to
wait until day has broken to see what Obama will do, and I have serious doubts
about him, which I will take up in another column. (After all, what does one
expect from a member of the Socialist Party). But for now, we wait for November
4th and I suspect I am not alone in laying in a bottle of champagne.

-David McReynolds

(David McReynolds worked for many years for the War Resisters League, was at
one time Chair of War Resisters International, and was the Socialist Party's presidential
candidate in 1980 and 2000. In 2004 he was the Green Party's candidate for US
Senate in New York State. He is retired and lives on the Lower East Side with his
two cats. He can be reached at: dmcreynolds@nyc.rr.com).

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