This is it.  This is the moment you swallow half the bottle of Rolaids to prepare for the gutwrenching onslaught of final period sports metaphors.  When you cross yourself and kiss your crucifix, pleading the Lord’s delivery from an avalanche of bottom of the 9ths, fourth and longs, and down two with two to gos.  When you find some small forbearance at the bottom of a tall bottle to deal with the cavalcade of reminders that this is the last, long shot for a main character in the final, tragic act.

Tonight (d)N0t will be completing its series on the 2008 Presidential Debates with the third round of John McCain versus Barack Obama.  The tossups are evaporating into blue, leaving an electoral map leaning toward an Obama landslide.  McCain’s defensive schedule has gone up, his internals have gone down and the entire GOP establishment is left wondering how it all went wrong.

The maverick’s big bets have led to big losses, giving his cool counterpart a commanding chip lead entering into the campaign’s eleventh hour.  Without a solid message, a concrete plan, or even a chink in Obama’s teflon, tonight’s presidential debate is his last opportunity to connect on anything nationally.  John McCain has claimed confidently Obama is in for a whooping of his “you-know-what.” Unfortunately for McCain, anything less will be a big Republican loss.

We’ll be riding this strange torpedo to the end with another gonzo roundtable delivering the blow-by-blow account of this final, knockdown bout.  Join our growing ranks on FriendFeed tonight at 8:30pm EDT, 5:30pm PDT.

Now the young ones… begin their wandering/ through the desert of tv news, legal claims and taxes/ With one eye on the missiles, and one on the obituaries/ waiting for the Children of the Cold War to die. 

-Dan Bern, “Children of the Cold War”

You know what keeps me up at night? The fact that a statistical half of this country not only would be ok with, but desires, a president who cannot even PRONOUNCE the name of the president of our alleged largest security threat. If John McCain’s wheelhouse, as Rachel Maddow so adroitly said, is foreign policy, I would hate to see his weak policy points. What we saw last night was not the clock-cleaning that I desired, and was not the elevated discourse that many wished to see, but it was, at the very least, the political equivalent of Obama shouting “go to bed, old man!” And that was satisfactory in its own way. 

But the question remains: why would anyone vote for McCain? Not why would anyone vote Republican, not why would anyone not vote for Obama; these are questions that are valid, but are not crucial right now. What I really want to know is after the long hard summer of campaigning, after the insane choice of Sarah Palin for VP, after the anger and the mood swings and the constant repetition of the false Maverick iconography, why does anyone believe the Emperor still possesses his clothes? He wants to assert himself as a man that flies in the face of this White House, yet we know that he has voted in the President’s favor 90% of the time. And this is not a party thing, for I think it is clear that when we talk about Bush we are no longer talking about Republicanism in any understandable way. This is a new party, and for all his talk about Teddy Roosevelt being his role model, the party of John McCain would be unrecognizable to the Rough Rider. 

What we saw on the stage last night was not a slight policy difference, it was not the slightly off-center points of view of Democrat v. Republican. We need new terminology. We need more than just Liberal and Conservative, we need new words. McCain cannot speak the new American language, any more than he can envision a new America. He is an old candidate, and I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean, when you are young you have hope. When you are old you have fear. What we saw last night was a dialogue between hope and fear. It is easy to be afraid- we are at war, both externally and internally, over the very meaning of America. Our financial situation is untenable, and China, a dangerous adversarial ally, literally owns our government because of the despicable handling of our banks and our defense. But we are a young country. We have seen much and we have struggled mightily, but as nations go we are still oh so very young. And it is time to start a children’s crusade for the soul of this country. 

We cannot elect McCain. We cannot elect a man who is a child of the cold war, now a grandfather of an American architecture that is crumbling at every turn. It is time to thank him for his service and bid him a good day. For while the man is an American hero, he will not remain one for 30 seconds more if he takes office.