8 Days to Change: Let's Hear It All

They've tried sarcasm and scorn. They've tried guns and abortion and gay marriage. They've tried palling around with terrorists. They've tried soft on crime, dangerous elite foreigner baby-killer socialist and communist. And above all, they're still trying racism.

It's not working. For the first time in a long time, when the buttons are pushed, nothing happens. Could it be that these are seen as empty as well as deceptive? Could it be that, as Frank Rich wrote Sunday, "As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense."

But it's not white virtue we're talking about. Andrew Sullivan points out:" More interestingly, the polls suggest overwhelming Latino and Asian support for a black candidate, erasing fears that those racial dynamics would come into play."

President Obama is going to face the need for sweeping change, and he's going to need the active support, the ideas and the help of millions of Americans. So let's get it all out there--let the McShame campaign use every last discredited charge and hateful suggestion. Let's purge all the poison of those empty words, bankrupt ideas, deceptive names, destructive ideas and phony "wedge" issues from the body politic.

We can take one more week of the Rabid Right's greatest hits. Then flush them down the drain on November 4.