"...Republicans call Obama a radical, because he once met one, and a socialist, because he'd restore tax rates on the rich to about what they were under Bill Clinton, well below their historic highs under such other notable socialists as Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

Obama is an incrementalist, an empiricist and a conciliator. The real question is not whether he is a closet radical but whether he'll move boldly and quickly enough to avert disaster. There are signs he will. We can only hope.

Apologists for John McCain say the economy derailed his campaign, but it isn't so. In just three months, McCain made three awful decisions. The first, and worst, was his choice of the unprepared and ethically challenged Sarah Palin. It cost him bunches of prominent Republicans and boatloads of lesser-known independent voters.

The second was not the financial crisis but his handling of it; the bellowing, the finger-pointing, the empty theatrics. Both candidates caved to the wretched bailout bill, but voters contrasted McCain's bombast with Obama's Buddha-like demeanor and drew their conclusions about whom they'd trust in a crisis.

McCain's third strike at bat was his central campaign message. Eight years have passed since the Bush machine brutally defamed him. What did he learn? To throw his lot in with Bush and then hire Bush's hatchet men to defame Obama. The result has been arguably the ugliest presidential campaign in living memory.

McCain may go down as the last man, for a while anyway, to do unto others as Bush did unto him. The old right wing has run out of issues. Such stalwarts as abortion, affirmative action and homophobia have lost their bite. It's why McCain needs his new running mate, Joe the Plumber, a poster boy for raw resentment.

It should be of more than passing concern to Connecticut voters the role played in all this by our junior senator, Joseph Lieberman, who was one of the first McCain acolytes to turn to the dark side, alleging Obama's opinions were "out of the mainstream" and feigning uncertainty as to whether Obama is a Muslim.

In Miami last week, Lieberman extolled the virtues of "Jose el Plumero." Earlier in Boca Raton, he called the Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers smears "fair game" because "we don't know that much about Obama." Perhaps the politics of fear finds a receptive audience in Florida. Back in the Senate, and here in Connecticut, Lieberman will find it goes down harder.

Nineteen years ago, I was blessed to be in Berlin as the Wall came down. It was among the most exhilarating experiences of my life, walking among the throngs of window-shoppers as they tasted not only capitalism but freedom for the first time. No one knew exactly what the fall portended but all felt the sense of impending liberation.

In a way this election is like that. America has been victim of a historic political logjam. We don't know everything an Obama administration will bring, only that the logjam will explode and the river of the democracy will flow again. It has been a dismal election at times, but beyond a doubt it is the most important of our lives. ..."

From Bill Curry on this page.