Election year in October in the US; ugly time

And the Republican Party has discovered new lows amongst the party faithful. I think one commenter from here had the best response to any attempt to absolve Palin from responsibility for the near-violent rhetoric of the crowds at her gatherings:

she is not lynching him, but she's a hell of a rope salesman.

I've becoming addicted to watching Pollster's poll of polls from day to day. Near as I can tell, Obama's popularity hasn't taken much of a hit over the past few days after the McCain campaign went full negative. But the start of the Republican incitement to hatred seems to roughly coincide with McCain's popularity slowly but steadily going up after a long period of decline.

I'll see if the trend continues before I speculate on what it means. But I think people need to keep in mind that even though Obama's currently ahead, he has not secured more than 50% of the vote: there are enough undecided voters that it's still statistically possible for McCain to win the popular vote even if Obama doesn't lose any support from now until election day. It seems unlikely, but I find that worrying nevertheless.