Likelihood of Success

Mickey Kaus’s first take on the debate sounds so much like a preposterous rationalization that it makes you wonder:

Obama’s great weakness is that he’s an unknown with an unusual (i.e. strange) background. By painting him as a big-spending liberal, McCain oddly made Obama seem less strange, and more acceptable. Voters are used to dealing with big spending liberals — and they also may think that the there’s not enough money for that much big spending anymore anyway.

The only reason this isn’t hopelessly absurd is that if you stare at it long enough you realize that, that last em-dash clause notwithstanding, most voters really have no problem with big spending liberals.

Democracy today is in that part of the cycle where the majority basically votes itself a new raise with each election.  And if it works so great on Wall Street, well why not for the whole darned country?