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Now the Democrats don’t have to fudge the distinction between George “Read My Lips” Bush and George “I’m the Decider” Bush. John McCain has picked up the worst endorsement of them all.

I guess McCain feels he’s already got the November election wrapped up.

Update: Cartoonist Clay Bennett points out that appearing alongside Bush has an upside for McCain.

Right now I’m reading Who Let the Dogs In?, a collection of old newspaper columns by Molly Ivins. She sure could write.

Molly died a year ago January. In January two years ago, she wrote that she was “Not. backing. Hillary.”

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it.

I wish Molly were still with us. I’ll bet she’d have something to say about Hillary’s “as far as I know” remark. “Enough sneaky insinuation,” perhaps? And I’d like to hear what she thought about the obscure junior Senator from Illinois.

By the end of his first term as president, John McCain will almost certainly have had a chance to nominate one or two Supreme Court Justices. Almost certainly, McCain’s nominees will be extreme conservatives, replacing aging moderates. It will be an unrestrained hard-right court then, and for many years to come.

Not everyone named to the federal bench by recent Republican presidents has been a right-wing ideologue, but the ones who aren’t are called “mistakes.” The modern Republican Party likes judges who protect corporate power not only from government, but from individual citizens, as well. They want a Supreme Court who rules that the president has no immunity from civil lawsuits when the president is Bill Clinton, and rules that the American people have no right to know how federal energy policy is made when the president is George W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton’s “kitchen sink” campaign against Barack Obama gave her pyrrhic victories in Texas and Ohio, and, I fear, gave the November election to the Republicans — something that seemed almost impossible a few months ago. She smeared Obama and tainted herself. Her “no we can’t” message to young voters energized and mobilized for real change this year is likely to sour another generation of citizens on the idea that political involvement can make a difference — and that gives us another generation of government of the people, by the corporations, for the corporations.

If this country is to be restored, this is the time. By 2012, I fear, we will find we come too late.

Melanie Safka and the Edwin Hawkins Singers: