As every day brings new instances of McCain-Palin crowds denouncing the Democratic nominee as a "terrorist" or "traitor" and in some cases even calling for his blood, Michael Barone bemoans the "Coming Obama Thugocracy." If the American right has lost its electoral edge and standing with the public at large, it has not lost its telltale imperviousness to irony.

In many ways it seems Barone is settling in to be one of the spokesman of the high-brow version of the revanchist paranoid right we're seeing on display in many of those McCain rallies.