At first, I thought it was a bit of a campaign tactic: whip up the base into a frenzy of hating liberals/Democrats and you’ll get more of them to the polls.
But at this point, with McCain’s numbers continuing to sink and the upcoming election clearly being anything but a base-vs.-base election, I have to agree with Josh Marshall: McCain knows he’s going to lose, he’ll probably lose badly, and he’s trying to lay the groundwork for post-election excuses as to how he wasn’t a total loser.
So, he’s trying to give the double-Y-chromosome horde someone to hate for the upcoming loss besides him.
Cute, though, that they are taking a "whipping up a mob? who, us?" approach to this.