Maybe McCain supporters need to look in the mirror...

Shouting racial epithets and calls for violence, the crowds at some John McCain rallies are turning ever angrier, putting on ugly public displays of raw hatred and paranoia as national electoral polls virtually without exception -- including those sponsored by media outlet Fox News, seen by many on the far right as "their" news source -- have shown a strong surge of support for Obama.

Analysts attribute the increased support for the Democrat to spiraling concern about the economy, the widespread perception that Obama and his running mate Sen. Joe Biden performed better than McCain and his VP choice, Gov. Sarah Palin, in the first two presidential and only vice-presidential debates, and to the growing notion that Obama's calm and steady demeanor, contrasting sharply with the increasingly shrill -- and widely denounced -- personal attacks launched by McCain and Palin, makes the Democrat seem more "presidential."

Yet, when reporters talk to the crowds at some McCain rallies, the Republican's supporters aren't buying any of it, expressing a range of responses from shock and disbelief that their candidate continues to sink in the polls to the ill-explained notion that some sort of fix is in. Particularly vexing to some appears to be the realization that their own Fox News' polls reflect the same upward surge of Obama support.

And then there is race. While overt displays of race hatred and paranoia had been limited, the increasingly harsh -- and largely unfounded or grossly exaggerated -- accusations by McCain and Palin have seemed to give license to the most ardent of Republicans, who are coming out of the box showing an ugly and unrepentant brand of racism seldom seen in the mainstream of US national politics.


As McCain supporters plaintively ask why their candidate continues to slide, they express bewilderment or cynical paranoia.

But perhaps they should take a good look in the mirror.

Most US voters have said repeatedly that they don't like negative campaigning. Most US citizens are extremely uncomfortable with overt signs of racial hostility of any kind. And most US voters are looking for real answers in a time of deep economic troubles, an Iraqi occupation that never seems to end and a war in Afghanistan that is spiraling farther out of control -- war efforts that are costing US taxpayers around 12 billion dollars a month.

But when Americans -- and others around the world -- tune into video from a McCain or Palin rally what do they see? Candidates who evade the issues, seemingly preferring to attack their rival as an outsider -- someone who is -- in the oft-repeated words of many McCain supporters -- not one of us.

But maybe that is precisely why Obama continues to rise in the esteem of mainstream Americans.