"With the presidential election only 3 weeks away, John McCain faces a stark choice: Will he go down in history as a principled conservative who lost an election standing on his convictions? Or..."

"... will he go down as an opportunist who lost while bringing out the darkest elements in American politics?... After 8 disastrous years of Republican rule under George W. Bush, all of the tides of history point towards a Democratic victory on November 4th. Obama’s principle [sic] obstacle to the presidency has been whether a majority of Americans were ready to accept him as Commander in Chief... McCain’s campaign believed that their only chance was to change the subject from the economy and make Obama scary and unacceptable, a man who 'pals around with terrorists.' In the face of the vast economic crisis, that strategy appears to be failing, turning off moderates who want answers to their problems, even as it may be firing up the base. More disturbingly, McCain’s strategy is bringing out the dark underbelly of American politics — a strain of hate-filled nativism and racism that always lurks just below the surface of parts of the American political psyche. Historian Robert Hofstadter called it 'the paranoid style in American politics.' This strain is showing itself in increasingly angry crowds at Palin/McCain rallies which yell 'terrorist' and 'off with his head' about Obama. Even McCain himself appears to be taken aback by the virulence of his crowds’ reaction, partially defending Obama over the boos of his own supporters. Since it was the Palin/McCain campaign that had unleashed these forces with its implications that Obama was sympathetic to terrorism, John McCain has reached the point of political schizophrenia. John McCain is now at a crossroads. At this historical moment, he has virtually no path to win the presidency. The question is whether he will lose with honor or lose with disgrace. Will his legacy be like that of his Arizona Senatorial predecessor Barry Goldwater, who ran a campaign of conservative principal in a liberal year and lost in a landslide, only to see his principals [sic!] come to power 16 years in the form of Ronald Reagan? Or will his legacy be like some combination of Richard Nixon, Robert Dole and George Wallace, one of a man whom, in his overweening ambition for victory, took the low road and tapped the dark forces of American politics to his own everlasting shame and dishonor?"

From a HuffPo column published 3 weeks before the 2008 election. I thought it was interesting to read in the context of the McCain post mortem.

Those questions at the end make me want to ask: Is Trump the dark legacy of McCain?