I'm starting to get scared. After the second Presidential debate, which aired yesterday, I'm getting a sinking feeling in my stomach that the Republicans are going to pull off a victory. I don't want to sound like an alarmist but I've seen polls like this before. Obama looks like he's going to have a commanding lead in the polls, he's winning in the debates, however the Republicans have a way of making fear a weapon with the population.

Willie Horton, the War, Swift Boat; all of these are part of the Republican past and those and other tactics will be adapted in the next month to take down Obama. Already, Sarah Palin has talked about Obama's association with William Ayres, as has McCain surrogate Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Talk radio has dug up associations with questionable black leaders to Obama.

Whenever the Republicans get into trouble, the personal destruction attacks start. I know they may call this character issues, and in many cases, probably in a lot of cases, character matters, but you can't point the fingers at one side without looking at the other side. That has been the curious factor in the personal attacks the Republicans have leveled at Obama. As an example there has been the association issue with William Ayres, where the argument is because early in his political career there was a fundraiser Obama attended at William Ayers home. Because of his association with the Weather Underground (which happened when Obama was 8) the Republicans conclude Obama supports terrorist. They also point to a committee Obama and Ayers were on. What isn't widely talked about is this commission also had a person on it that was a friend of McCain and gave money to his campaign. So if we're going by guilt by association, McCain is in the same boat.

That's what is so ridiculous by the attacks, because people are willing to look at tenuous connections then make sweeping conclusions from them. McCain has more to answer for with the Keating 5, since he accepted trips for his family and helped set up a progression of events that directly relate to the financial upheaval we have today, but the Republicans know people are afraid. Say the word terrorist and people have images of 9/11. People already have fears with Obama because of his name and his supposed Muslim origins. There has been nasty viral emails and videos of Obama being a messiah, or worse yet the antichrist.

Yes, I know this sounds silly, but people believe what they want to believe, and at the heart of things it makes more sense, in their minds, to say they aren't voting for Obama because he's a Manchurian candidate than to say they won't vote for him because he's black.

The polls are beginning to show Obama with a commanding lead, which is the drumbeat the media is putting out there. The background noise, the things not reported on, is the nasty and almost racist tone the McCain campaign is taking. I worry that many in the Obama camp may feel he's in such a lead there's no reason to continue getting out the vote. That could be troubling if the race tightens up, which it probably will, and if the McCain base turns out more than the Obama base. We're at the tail end of the election but it's where the crazy stuff happens so we have to be vigilant.