Via Sullivan…

McCain Miami Rally, Getting Ugly Down Here

After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that’s what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.

The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.

"People were screaming ‘Terrorist!’ ‘Communist!’ ‘Socialist!’" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."

Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting ‘Obama!’ and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."

I hope nobody thinks this sort of thing is going to stop after election day.  What you need to understand is they’re not trying to win the election anymore.  I really believe that choosing Palin was for inciting the base for war on an Obama administration they had come to believe was a certainty.  They know this time the fighting will be harder then it was to destroy Clinton because the democratic grassroots, if not the leadership, is organized and ready for it this time.  Expecting it even.  And maybe they’ve taken the measure of Obama in their private conferences and figured that he’s no Bill Clinton.  So they’re stoking the gutter full of hate, because the gutter is all they have left to win with.  That’s why it was Palin.  People are shaking their heads wondering how McCain could pick the likes of her to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.  But he didn’t pick her to be vice president.  Her job is to be gasoline on the fire.

What we’re seeing now isn’t the last ugly gasp of a failed presidential campaign, but the start of the scorched earth after-the-election knife fight for the next four years, if not longer.  I’ve been saying for years now that the shit doesn’t really hit the fan until the republicans begin loosing power.  In the coming years, it won’t only be gay people getting bashed on the streets of America.  Just so you know. 

Welcome to the reality your gay and lesbian neighbors have been living with for decades now.  You knew it had to be you next didn’t you.