Obama knocks it out of the part, as this guy says.
Meanwhile, disgust with McCain is building. I wonder if it ever crosses McCain's mind what sort of "victory" his would be if he were to win by these tactics. (He won't, of course) We know now what sort of man he is and he knows we know.
Kyle E. Moore says at Comments from Left Field:
As polls continue to show, the kitchen sink strategy that the McCain campaign just isn’t working. The McCain campaign has taken the politics of personal destruction further than even his predecessor did (Bush rarely let his name or fingerprints be found attached to the most heinous attacks against Kerry), and yet they have proven thus far to be ineffective at moving the needle even remotely in McCain’s direction.
The obvious reason behind this is the blatant disconnect that this shows to the American people. People are truly and seriously frightened by the crisis on Wall Street, but when they turn to the Republican candidate for the presidency, to one of the two men running for the job of leading us through increasingly dark times, what they find is a man who is trying desperately to gin up boogeymen in his opponent’s past...Further, there are dissenting voices within the conservative ranks that further hinder the kitchen sink strategy. Dissenters such as David Frum and George Will rightly point out the follies in this chosen line of attack....
Joe Biden pointed out that McCain wouldn't say any of this to Obama's face last week.
“All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on YouTube … John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” Biden said this morning. “In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.”
It's so so, Joe.
I assumed that the reason McCain could never look Obama in the eye was out of shame. But John Cole has another explanation.
John McCain will not openly confront Obama with his smears and lies and innuendo. John McCain will not come out and talk about Ayers, he has to be asked. That is why he goes to places like Fox News, so he can be asked. What a coincidence.
John McCain is a coward....
He would rather produce 2 minute ads that his campaign will never pay to air anywhere, and hope that the tire-swinging media will bring up the topic so he doesn’t have to do it himself.
John McCain just wants to throw shit out there, and “raise questions” about Obama, and hope his supporters connect the dots, because he is too much of a coward to directly push this toxic stew.(Balloon Juice)
Josh Marshall says:
McCain's moral cowardice has been one of the subtexts of this campaign ever since he wound up the nomination and turned his attention to Barack Obama. But I did not realize it would reveal itself in such a physical dimension....
He ever swaggered on for a couple days about how he was going to 'take the gloves off' when he met up with Obama in Nashville. But when the two of them were there in each others physical presence ... nothing. By a myriad of gestures and reactions Obama owned him....
Nor is it a matter of shifting off the tactics, because as soon as McCain made his hasty retreat from the stage at Debate #2 he was right back at it. In every other aspect of life, high and low, refined and unlovely, we have a word for that kind of behavior: cowardice.
Ta-Nehisi Coates expresses disgust.
Here is what I know: McCain will talk that shit about Ayers and brag about taking the gloves off. He will send his wife and Sarah Palin out to do his dirty work. But when faced with the man who he believes "pals around with terrorist" he played his position.
Melissa McEwen can't wait for the next debate.
McCain says he'll go after Obama at the next debate on the "radical terrorist extremist zomg" meme his surrogates have been pushing for days. Noted.
We already know Obama told him to bring it—now Biden is throwing down the gauntlet, too..McCain's going to look like a megadouche if he doesn't look Obama in the eye and call him a terrorist to his face at the next debate.
The best part? McCain's going to look like a megadouche if he does look Obama in the eye and call him a terrorist to his face at the next debate..
Meanwhile, the morons of the far right are scarily (but predictably) eager to jump on the Obama-is-a-terrorist bandwagon.
As the rhetoric at Palin's rallies has ratcheted up, so too has the language of supporters in the crowds coming to see her. At rallies in Florida, supporters were heard yelling "treason" and "traitor" when Obama's name was mentioned.
At a rally on Monday in Clearwater, one man shouted "Kill him," according to the Washington Post, after Palin mentioned Obama's association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers. It was not clear who made the comment or if the man was referring to Ayers or to Obama, but the Secret Service says it will investigate.(ABC News)
I'd dismiss these people as too stupid and too fringey to take seriously, but---seriously...it's getting to the point where I am starting to wonder about the motives of McCain and Palin. Do they think the lies they are spreading about Obama are just going to evaporate when the election is over and he becomes president elect?
Kyle E. Moore further notes:
McCain is not doing anything to help himself win the election, but he’s doing everything he possibly can to stir up the anger among his own supporters to a terrifying and dangerous point.
The video you see coming from the last link is from here, from an Obama supporter who took his camera down to a McCain campaign rally, started rolling, and simply asked if Obama was a terrorist. The responses are chilling, and enough to make one sick.
And yes, McCain is responsible for this because he’s instigating it. He’s showing no regard for personal responsibility, and given that Obama currently has a near 90% chance of being the next president, he’s not even showing that he can put country first. This is McCain first all the way, and in the process, I fear that he’s putting his opponent’s life at greater risk than it already is.
Scarecrow at FDL calls out our useless, toothless media for its typically tepid, timid failure to call this what it is.
Let us be clear about what McCain/Palin are doing:
John McCain has authorized Sarah Palin to use not just lies and smears but deliberately inflammatory rhetoric to incite hatred and fear of Barack Obama. Audience members are already calling for violence. It is only a matter of time before McCain/Palin's falsely linking Obama to terrorism and unAmerican sympathies will erupt in violence against Obama's people, the media or anyone opposing the McCain/Palin ticket.
Inciting others to violence is a crime, a dangerous felony, and it is time for our media to stop treating this incitement as just another gradation of "negative campaigning." Such head-in-the-sand dismissiveness is too often "balanced" by stories that "the other side is doing negative ads too" as though pointing out flaws in an opponent's position on health care was equivalent to insinuating your opponent is a menace to public safety. (emphasis in original)
Instead of investigating Obama's already fully vetted past associations to Ayers, perhaps the media should look into McCain's history. Steve Benen points out:
But as long as we're on the subject, McCain's associations continue to be increasingly interesting as well. We've known for a while that McCain has befriended a convicted felon who advised his supporters on how best to shoot federal officials, used the money of a convicted criminal to help buy a house, befriended a radical anti-Catholic televangelist, befriended a radical anti-American televangelist, was a long-time associate of Charles Keating, and hired for his campaign the publisher of a Confederate nostalgia magazine who has described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist." This week, we also learned about McCain serving on the board of the extremist U.S. Council for World Freedom, where he worked alongside Iran-Contra figures, and a eugenics researcher studying "white superiority." (Washington Monthly)
Next lie, this time from a McCain campaign co-chair: Obama is a drug-using ex-gangsta, a veteran of the mean streets.
Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a McCain campaign co-chairman, edged up to an explicitly racial attack on Barack Obama on Thursday, describing the Illinois Senator as a "guy of the street" before raising his youthful drug use.....
It's unclear what Keating meant by "a guy of the street," but his assertion that Obama should "admit" his brief drug use in high school makes little sense, since it was Obama himself who did disclose it in his memoir published 12 years ago.
I'm thinking that anyone in the McCain campaign called "Keating" should probably keep a low profile to avoid stirring up any unpleasant associations, speaking of "guilt by association."
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