Who is the man who will lead a campaign for his fellow man?
BARACK!
Can you dig it?

Who’s the cat that won’t freak out
When financial danger’s all about?
BARACK!
Right on.

They said this guy Barack is a cool mother
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I’m just rappin’ about Barack.
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

He’s a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman
MICHELLE OBAMA!
That’s right.

Friends, as the training wheels come off John McCain’s Straight Talk Express, the conclusion is inescapable: barring some radical reform inside the McCain campaign itself, Barack Obama will likely be the next President of the United States. And, yes, I will finally drink the Kool-Aid, many of you, and your pals in mainstream media, have been proffering for months.

While I hold out the option to withdraw this sudden show of support based on the irrational behavior of Obama supporters and a sudden come-to-Jesus moment inside Camp McCain, take it from the last punk-rock independent holdout in America: Barack Obama has proved himself worthy of this endorsement. Though the planets aligned perfectly for Obama (an aging opponent, a financial meltdown, an AWOL incumbent), and though he received innumerable breaks throughout his “blessed” life, this election was not given to him. He earned it.

In contrast to Obama’s measured focus on economic policy, for the last few weeks the McCain campaign has stupidly followed the losing script I saw unfold in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ill-conceived run for the Democratic nomination: brazen ad hominem attacks, grotesque injection of racial innuendo, and the stoking of populist paranoia instead of practical, intelligent, and independent thinking about the problems we face as a nation. Because of his recent Ayers-themed ads alone, I cannot presently support the McCain candidacy. For, if Mr. McCain was to win with such low-class tactics, it would not only invalidate the premise of his life’s work, it would validate the utility of such tactics in future political campaigns. Frankly, I do not think our country can or should be governed from such a faulty and shameful premise.

My beefs with Senator Obama’s social activist agenda and the blindly imbalanced adoration of many of his supporters at present pale before the greater need for national unity. Senator Obama may not be the most experienced or demonstrably bipartisan candidate, but, as he gracefully showed over the last year, he just might be the candidate with the right temperament for this troubled time.

I like this man. I like his basic goodness. I like his heart. I like his humility. Most of all, I like his willingness to fight for green energy, a vital issue to me and our nation, which even Al Gore refused to make front and center of his failed presidential bid. Though I’d like to see Mr. Obama speak more often and more forcefully for personal responsibility, fiscal discipline, right moral conduct, and an end to quotas, open borders, and the welfare state, he has clearly matured from his days as a left-wing community organizer. He now has the potential to govern from the center on these issues, as long as he has McCain-like cajones to talk tough to his base, whose immoderate fanaticism starkly contrasts with the moderate mien of their candidate.

While I hope that Mr. Obama strongly reprimands ACORN and other organizations in his campaign’s hire who have engaged in voter fraud on his behalf, I also think that the recent McCain strategy of diminishing Mr. Obama’s “moral character” because of his past associations with ACORN and unrepentant Weather Underground member William Ayers is an insufficient reason to deny Mr. Obama the presidency.

Keep in mind that I do not for a minute think that Mr. Obama has been completely candid about the depth of his connection to Mr. Ayers, his fellow “community organizer,” anymore than he was truthful about what he heard from the pulpit at Pastor Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. As his backsliding on Wright revealed, Mr. Obama can be a smooth and adept dissembler (the world has seen Palin’s transcripts from far-flung Wasilla High, but, interestingly, few have seen Obama’s transcripts from Occidental, Columbia or Harvard). I also do not believe that Michelle Obama has been candid about the depth of her personal agreement with some of the detestable points raised in Wright’s sermons. The reverse racism displayed by Mr. Wright was at some point shared by the Obamas or they would have left the church years ago.

But rather than hold these beliefs against the Obamas, I see them now as further evidence that there remains a lot of racial healing that needs to happen in America before such egregious bigotries completely fall away from the minds of otherwise intelligent people.

While I do think that ACORN, Ayers, and Wright are relevant when it comes to Mr. Obama's professed belief in top-town social engineering, the relevance of these associations stops there. Besides, it’s a long stretch from the above arguments to the McCain campaign’s increasingly strident claim that Mr. Obama is guilty by association with terrorists and bigots. It is here where I have to draw the line and say, Enough Is Enough.

Barack Obama may have suffered from “blind ambition.” He no doubt felt compelled to endure the company of odd and hateful bedfellows on his path to both self-realization and a successful political career (in Obama’s odyssey those two tracks are inseparable), but now that he is near the finish line, I marvel at how this child of the Chicago Machine is so free of taint. The Republicans are masters at Machiavellian duplicity. That after two years all they can come up with on Obama is Wright, Rezko, Ayers and ACORN -- not a romantic affair, not a campaign finance scandal, not even verifiable proof to the allegations that Ayers penned Obama’s first memoir or that Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” -- shows that the Illinois Senator really is a man of strong moral fiber. The voters sense this fact in their guts, which is why the Republican personal attacks are not sticking.

Unfortunately, with Mr. Obama’s triumph would come a great loss. It’s sad to see a unique, courageous reformer like John McCain resort to the politics of yesterday. The Atwater-Rove playbook isn’t relevant this year. Credit Obama with understanding this long before the current financial crisis made it abundantly clear. Evidently, John McCain didn’t get the memo or chose to ignore it.

Whether you are right, left, or, like me, of the critical thinking center, Barack Obama deserves our support. And, unless events on the ground radically change the basis for the above claims, it is important that we give Obama our support now, rather than wait till Election Day. It is vitally important that the healing begin now and that momentum be created now, so that when President Obama enters the Oval Office he can hit the ground running.

The decision to switch my support to Obama after wholeheartedly backing Mrs. Clinton and then cautiously backing Mr. McCain was not an easy one. And there are still misgivings I have about the Junior Senator. But over the last two weeks as Doddering John and his dangerously incompetent sidekick, Shotgun Sarah, have embraced the politics of personal destruction, I was left with no choice.

Mr. McCain could easily have won this election on the economy, the top issue for 59% of American voters. On this pivotal issue the Arizona Senator had a clear and winnable road map. First, Mr. Obama received over $125,000 in campaign donations (second only to Senate Banking Chairman, Christopher Dodd, who received $165,000) from Political Action Committees and individuals associated with corrupt sub prime loan enablers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Secondly, it’s now clear that the market implosion that Fannie and Freddie abetted, can be primarily traced to the Democrat-backed Community Reinvestment Act -- which amounted to mandatory quotas for high-risk home loan borrowers – not simply the Bill Clinton-backed repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Back in 2005, Mr. McCain co-sponsored S.190, a Chuck Hagel-led measure to regulate the dangerously loose lending practices at Democrat-protected Fannie and Freddie. Where are the ads on these points? Why are they not being run in every single swing state? Maybe it’s because McCain campaign chairman Rick Davis joined with Democrats in shielding Fannie and Freddie from oversight as president of the Homeownership Alliance, a Fannie and Freddie advocacy group. McCain should have fired Davis months ago.

As Davis and campaign strategist Steve Schmidt drive the McCain campaign into a ditch, it’s quite clear Mr. McCain isn’t his own man anymore. For a prisoner-of-war who FORGAVE his Vietnamese tormentors, pioneered historic campaign finance reform, bucked his Republican colleagues on global warming, Gitmo, torture, steroids, and the conduct of the war in Iraq, his sudden fall from grace is staggering. At an absolutely critical moment, when swing voters were STARVING for straight talk on the financial crisis, when McCain had a slam-dunk narrative to tell these voters about the brazen culpability of Obama and the Democrats in the current financial mess, the McCain campaign chose to talk about William Ayers. It would be seen as an act of political senility, if the Rove-ian acolytes inside Camp McCain didn’t orchestrate it. For me, this strategic error was the final litmus test. At that moment, John McCain not only lost my vote, he lost all credibility as a thinking man’s moderate.

That said, I hope that Mr. Obama does not take the landslide victory he is about to receive as a green light to stop all self-reflection. In fact, Mr. Obama would be well served by adopting Senator’s McCain’s strongest policy prescriptions. First, he should make earmark reform a major piece of his bipartisan agenda. While it is true the $18 billion or so spent on earmarks every year pales in comparison to other government expenditures, the pernicious effect such quid pro quo favors have on the legitimacy of the political process far outweighs their role in the budget. Even if earmarks are for projects many of us could support (including tax breaks for alternative energy producers), they should be resisted. Enlightened or not, every earmark is corrosive to the democratic process because it rewards special interest influence at the expense of the average American. Supporting earmarks on behalf of those you feel are operating in the public interest makes it much easier, when the chips are down and your popularity has waned, to push for earmarks for those with less than honorable intentions.

In addition, Mr. Obama should embrace the McCain strategy for victory in Afghanistan. We have learned in Iraq, at great loss of blood and treasure, what works against a fundamentalist insurgency. It would be self-defeating for Obama to not apply the “secure-and-hold” strategy to Afghanistan, no matter what he has proclaimed during the election. In fact, Mr. Obama already knows that McCain has the correct strategy, but, for political reasons, is not admitting as much.

Finally, Mr. Obama should renounce the politics of reverse racism once and for all. Only a man of mixed-race parentage like Barack Obama has the right and the power to end the destructive effect of affirmative action on not only its victims but also on the psyches of those who benefit from it. Racial quotas, like any quota, are a stain on our democracy and must be halted at once. Mr. Obama can make this happen.

Because of his calm demeanor, his genuine class, his purity of heart, and because of the superior organizational team he has assembled behind him, I now endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States. And I urge all 10 readers of the Crotty Farm Report to do the same, so I can stop this quadrennial ranting and get back to making a living as a brand consultant to flailing businesses worldwide.