As his warmup for Wednesday night's debate, Lou Dobbs pretended (as he always does) to be engaging in free-form, nonpartisan outrage. Funny how it turned into nonstop Democrat bashing: from Dobbs' wonderment that white rural voters apparently don't care that Obama once supposedly dissed them, to the hyped-up "voter fraud scandal" in Ohio (odd, too, how the prospect of legitimate voters being denied the right to vote bothers Dobbs not one little whit), to ACORN (which he repeatedly referred to as a "radical left group").
But it all hit a peak when Diana West came on and said this, in discussing how someone like Obama could be ahead at this juncture:
WEST: I find it amazing. I think that a lot of our traditional beliefs about the way people think and act are being shattered in this election. One of whom would be in a time of economic crisis, I am amazed that Americans seem to be turning to one, the one, Senator Obama of course, who is someone who embraces what I would increasingly describe as socialist policies. He spoke about it this week in terms of spreading wealth around.
We kept hearing John McCain deride Obama during the debate for saying he wants to "spread the wealth". It's starting to sound like the "Obama is a socialist" meme is just about all they have left. (That may also explain why it's on the tongues of the entire wingnutosphere.)
Of course, West went on to advise McCain to go on the attack last night over Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.
No wonder she thinks Civilization As We Know It Is Ending (because of Latinos, naturally, which makes her a Dobbs favorite and regular). It's being overrun by nonwhite socialists, after all.
I'm really hoping that the coming election sends a message -- not just to the Republican right, but to the poobahs in charge of our media -- that the public is fed up with this bullshit. And guys like Dobbs and West are relegated to the dungheaps of media history whence they crawled.
