Now that the
race has tightened, and with centrist minded Democrats like myself swinging clearly to McCain, you are starting to see some of Obama’s more ardent supporters go off the deep end in
trying to smear MccCain’s VP, Sarah Palin. If you are reading my blog, you have likely heard most of the internet rumors and smears about Palin at this point: everything
from a list of books they claimed she banned to
raising her daughter’s daughter as her own.
While
I do not care for Sarah Palin, and on a slew of issues we disagree completely, I do think things have gone too far in trying to bring her down, and that it is going to hurt Obama’s campaign, even when he is not responsible for the rumors. Clive Crook wrote in
the Financial Times:
"The problem in my view is less Mr Obama and more the attitudes of the claque of official and unofficial supporters that surrounds him.
Little was known about Ms Palin, but it sufficed for her nomination to be regarded as a kind of insult. Even after her triumph at the Republican convention in St Paul last week, the put-downs continued. Yes, the delivery was all right, but the speech was written by somebody else – as though that is unusual, as though the speechwriter is not the junior partner in the preparation of a speech, and as though just anybody could have raised the roof with that text. Voters in small towns and suburbs, forever mocked and condescended to by metropolitan liberals, are attuned to this disdain. Every four years, many take their revenge.”
I agree completely. There are plenty of reasons to stand against Palin and her views on a slew of subjects, but her opponents have taken to crass class based comments and innuendos rather than policy arguments. As
Neo-Neocon writes:
“Forget that she’s a college graduate, with a father who was a teacher. She went to the wrong college—or colleges. She’s a redneck, even if she’s from the far North where the sun hardly shines for half the year. She’s a redneck at heart, don’t you see, with the “mess” of a pregnant daughter and five children herself. How very gross.
She hunts. She fishes. Hubby’s a Marlboro man, minus the cigarettes. She’s a working woman but not an oppressed “worker.” She probably even shops at Walmart and listens to country music.”
Christopher Hitchens makes clear that the left’s apparent revulsion to characters like Palin
rarely ends in their favor.
“Walter Dean Burnham, one of the country's pre-eminent Marxists, used to attract ridicule back in the 1960s and '70s by saying that Ronald Reagan would one day be president. He based this on various calculations, one of which was what I'll call the attraction-repulsion factor. Previous candidates of the right, from McCarthy to Nixon, indeed, had expressed powerful dislike and resentment of their foes. That can work, up to a point, but the problem is that if you radiate hostility, you also tend to attract it. Reagan didn't radiate it and also didn't attract it. He went on, in a genial enough way, to destroy the Democratic "New Deal" coalition. I don't think Gov. Palin has quite that sort of folksy charisma, but I am still not sure it's entirely wise to patronize her.”
At this point, it’s almost necessary for Obama to come out swinging against some of his left leaning supporters. He cultivated them throughout the primary to beat Clinton, and when he was leading in the polls against McCain, there was no need to upset this aspect of his base. I don’t fault him for not coming out against these rouge elements earlier, but his chances of winning this election look weaker than they did 1 month ago, and he may need to take action if he wants to turn that around.
Turning on these people by publicly condemning them may reassure the centrist minded independents that he is not beholden to these morons, but it may also piss off the very people who put him where he is today. It’s a risk for sure, but all moves at this point in the campaign are risky.
People I personally know, that I find to be generally intelligent in their professional lives, many of which have PHDs, have been sending me links to bizarre Palin conspiracies and unsubstantiated rumors in the last few weeks. They accepted them as legitimate without asking for even the scarcest form of detail. It boggles my mind that these folks, all of which support Barak Obama, don’t see how damaging it is to push these smears, and publicly throw support behind Obama out of the other side of their mouth.
Yet, if Obama loses in November, they won’t bother reflecting on how their ghastly gossiping helped lose them the election. Democrats won’t bother considering the fact that Obama was too inexperienced to lead the country in the eyes of many Americans. No one on the left will say he lost because some of his policies are wrong and unpopular.
They will
cry Racism. Or “election irregularities.” Or Fox News. They will be wrong on all those counts, and that will allow them to make the same mistakes yet again in the next election.
UPDATE:I agree with
Johnny Guitar, who writes:
“I appreciate why some people are practically drooling at this contest featuring the old guy and the woman versus the black guy and the Catholic. And while it is nice to have a change from the usual election between four Caucasian males with great teeth and bad haircuts, I also can’t ignore the fact that policy seems to have been demoted to a distant second place behind personality.”
He also brings us this picture. It sure says something, I just don’t know what exactly that is.
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