McCain and his Rovian henchmen are hoping that by appealing to the most base fears of low-information white voters that they can squeak out a narrow victory or at the very seriously damage Obama should he become president. To lead this effort, McCain has hired three masters of political destruction who helped to torpedo McCain's presidential campaign in 2000 by spreading the lie that McCain's adopted daughter was really his love child fathered with a Black prostitute.

Here is McCain in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace defending his campaign's use of robocalls, a tactic McCain called "hate-filled" in 2000:

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These calls are so offensive that Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine asked that the campaign cease running the calls in her state.

A group supporting McCain is now raising funds to air a radio ad targeting Black voters in swing states claiming that Sen. Obama is a slumlord who wants to "create a fund that gives his slumlord buddies $500 million a year." This ad by the National Black Republican Association has no basis in truth, but as Sen. Obama pointed out a while back "the Straight Talk Express seems to have lost a wheel."

The GOP effort to demonize the voter registration work of ACORN is already in full effect with McCain himself claiming that the group which is focused on building political power for low-income communities "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. " The GOP's smear campaign against ACORN has resulted in the group receiving hate-filled messages like this:

Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He's a fucking nigger, and he's a piece of shit. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They're gonna get all hung honeys, they're gonna get assassinated, they're gonna get killed.

We have also seen the McCain campaign compare Sen. Obama to Hitler, a McCain supporter attack a reporter, an Obama-labeled ghost hanged in effigy in man's yard and shouts of "kill him" when Sen. Obama's name is mentioned at McCain/Palin rallies.

A recent New York Times editorial warned that the McCain campaign had moved "into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia." And that's just the beginning of what we can expect. The next 15 days will see McCain with no sense of decency appeal to id of American electorate.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo accurately points out:

Stripped down to its components McCain's message to voters is this: "Don't forget. He's definitely black. And he may be a terrorist." That's the message. The nuts and bolts is a concerted effort to keep Democrats from voting -- through intimidation, by striking new voters from the rolls, which is going to happen to lots of them, clogging polling stations to create delays that keep late day (predominantly) Obama voters from voting altogether. Smears in the air and voter suppression on the ground.

What we are fighting for is not just the election of Barack Obama as our next president. We are fighting to break the stranglehold that the right-wing extremist base that is the Republican Party has had on our national politics for far too long.