Griper Blade: The Fight After the Fight

I've decided to spend the remaining days until the election coming up with reasons to vote. But the best laid plans yada-yada-yada... I started out writing this as another post about why you should vote, but after editing, it turned out to be more about after the election. Still, you go vote. We've got to win the big one before we take on the following little battles. So vote to take the grand prize and here's a little preview of what'll happen afterward.

The right isn't going away after Tuesday. They're going to work to rebuild their movement and to tear down Barack Obama. A lot of people think that Obama's ad last night was overkill -- after all, he's far enough ahead in the polls that he can just run out the clock and do fine. But a big part of Obama's continued campaigning isn't about November 4, but November 5 and beyond.

The good news is that the most recent example we have of the right's attempts to discredit a president didn't work at all. Bill Clinton was supposedly everything from a serial killer to a cocaine smuggler. In the end, the right managed only to inoculate the public against BS and instill skepticism in the electorate. When Clinton was finally impeached for a crime with all the seriousness of an unpaid traffic ticket, his approval rating actually increased. Most disapproved of the impeachment effort.

So that's the good news; Republicans suck at this stuff. The bad news is that it's 100% guaranteed that they'll make the effort anyway. William Ayers isn't going away either. Nor is Rev. Wright. The Republican party will go into full damage control mode -- which usually means that, rather than build themselves up again, they'll try to damage Obama to an equal extent and level the playing field that way...

[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]