The Nation: Smearing Obama (The Sequel)

[marmar]

Smearing Obama (The Sequel)
posted by Ari Berman on 10/06/2008 @ 11:18am



The long-awaited smear campaign against Barack Obama has once again gone mainstream, with the McCain campaign and their Republican allies caricaturing Obama as a terrorist-loving 60s radical.

Like me, you may be experiencing a sense of déjà vu. Much the same thing happened to Obama last spring, with Hillary Clinton and her surrogates pushing these flimsy connections and the mainstream media latching on. I documented these smears and their origins in two pieces, "Smearing Obama" and "Obama Under the Weather."

That strategy didn't work then and it isn't likely to work now, as former Clinton communications chief Howard Wolfson writes in a new blog.

Yet it's worth reflecting on just how low the McCain campaign is stooping. Many of the dubious claims and outright falsehoods against Obama first took root in the far, far right, started by anti-Semitic con artists (as my colleague Chris Hayes documented in "The New Right-Wing Smear Machine"), discredited fringe bloggers and Islam-hating Christian right radicals. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/368923