Recently the focus of the election has shifted to John McCain’s “dirty politics” and his inability to tell the truth. Many have begun criticizing him for this (although still not nearly enough), but they’re overlooking his big problem: if McCain starts telling the truth, he will lose.

There is no way to sugar-coat that. John McCain cannot win this election without deceiving the American people into believing his false accusations against Barack Obama. At the beginning of this race, both candidates promised clean campaigns that focused on the issues. Obama has held his promise; McCain hasn’t. Obama has said that McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose this election, and he is absolutely right. John McCain has gone from a man of high integrity, or at least higher than the average politician, to being a sleazy liar who thinks America is dumb enough to believe him.

The only problem for us lies in the fact that he is right. America is dumb enough to believe him. The average voter doesn’t care enough to do research on the facts. They see McCain’s dishonest campaign ads and assume that it’s all true. Usually, the mainstream media has to be the one to call a politician out on their lies, but for some reason, they have chosen to ignore McCain’s smear campaign. This is why I find it hilarious when people complain that the media is liberally biased. They covered McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin negatively because it was a stupid decision. I suppose when the cable news networks were all frantically reporting news of Barack Obama being a secret Muslim, that was a rare moment of fairness and balance, right?

I really don’t like calling America stupid, mostly because I wish it wasn’t the case. But I look at the polls and see that 32% of Americans still think Bush has done a good job, and 12% of voters think Barack Obama is a Muslim… not to mention the number of voters who think being a Muslim is actually a bad thing. (HINT: it’s like Christianity, but you aren’t allowed to draw their Jesus)

Honestly, people, please show McCain that he isn’t going to win this way. If he does, then that is the future we have to look forward to: more politicians winning based on lies that we refuse to call them out on… and it’ll be exactly what we deserve.