What will it say to young people like this if the Republicans steal the election again?

I no longer expect elections to be fair. I no longer expect Republicans to respect people's right to vote. I no longer expect my vote to be counted. I no longer expect voting machines that accurately record the vote and that aggregate correctly. I now assume that the election taking place in less than a month will be stolen by John McCain and Sarah Palin with the help of the thugs they've whipped into a frenzy, the executives of the voting machine companies, and their shills in the media like Tom Brokaw, who has turned Press the Meat into a "Vote McCain" commercial.

But I am 53 and I am a cynic.

In 1968, another generation endured a year that saw its symbols of hope mowed down not at the ballot box but by bullets. Another generation wanted an end to the relentless feeding of the giant war machine. Another generation thought it could, through the ballot box, effect the changes that would end the Vietnam War. That generation saw its candidate of hope mowed down in the Ambassador Hotel, and the icon of the Civil Rights movement mowed down on a motel balcony. And it rioted in Chicago as a decent man who just happened to have the misfortune to be tied to the policies of an unpopular president nominated for the presidency -- and lose a close election to the hated Richard Nixon.

And for the next four years, there was unrest in this country, led by SDS, the Weathermen, and their ever-more-nihilistic brethren.

No wonder the McCain campaign is so obsessed with William Ayers. No wonder they want to tie Obama to him at the wrists and ankles.

But what of the young people of today; those shining faces you see at the Obama rallies; kids who have never been interested in politics until now; kids who have channeled all their expertise in new media and all their creativity into this candidacy; kids like M.C. Yogi:

It's easy for John McCain and his Campaign of Thugs to want to continue to fight the 1960's culture wars by embodying all the imagery that is familiar from that time into the solitary person of William Ayers. Bad Liberal With Bombs. That's all the mindless, toothless, brainless, chickenshit people in towns that Islamic terrorists wouldn't even think of bothering with can see. Bad Liberal With Bombs. It's so much easier to fight on that familiar terrain than to try to understand credit default swaps, after all.

And it's still possible that they may succeed. If you read Bradblog on a regular basis (as you should) and if you watch this documentary by Greg Palast, you won't be so certain that this election is a slam-dunk for Obama, no matter how much Republican shill Ed Rollins claims that it's a done deal.

In 1980, young people weren't all gung-ho about Al Gore. Gore didn't become a hero to the young until later on. But Barack Obama is one to these kids. If he loses because his campaign went down in flames, it'll be just another of those heartbreaking lessons that we all learn sooner or later -- that sometimes life just sucks. But if the Republicans take away these kids' hope for the future through disenfranchisement, vote-rigging, or any of the many other ways they've found to cheat, they just might find themselves thinking William Ayers was the least of their worries.

(h/t)