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October 10, 2008

10/10: Now It's Personal

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the angry tone of recent John McCain events, where furious GOPers are denouncing Barack Obama as a "terrorist" and a "traitor." Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain and Sarah Palin (and their surrogates who invoke Obama's middle name "Hussein") of stoking these ugly sentiments by portraying Obama as a dangerous unknown who sympathizes with terrorists. Many bloggers believe that the McCain camp is playing with fire by using such inflammatory language. Daily Kos' Hunter warns: "Inciting right wing crowds to consider an American presidential candidate a 'terrorist' isn't merely dirty politics or otherwise unseemly -- it comes uncomfortably close to implicitly encouraging actual violence."

On the right side of the blogosphere, conservative bloggers continue to hammer Obama over his ties to ex-Weatherman William Ayers and other unsavory figures. Several righty bloggers are even tying Ayers to the financial crisis and speculating about the possibility that Ayers wrote Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father. Liberal bloggers, meanwhile, are accusing McCain of cowardice because he's willing to attack Obama over his ties to Ayers but not willing to raise the issue during debates. John Cole complains: "John McCain had 90 minutes to bring this stuff up to Obama, to his face, and passed. John McCain is a coward."

MCCAIN/PALIN: Festivals Of Hate?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the angry tone of recent McCain/Palin events, and they're blaming McCain and Palin for stoking these ugly sentiments in their supporters:

  • Daily Kos' Devilstower: "McCain-Palin rallies over the last few days have disintegrated into festivals of hate, and the two candidates at the center of this are encouraging it. [...] The language McCain and Palin are using: 'radical,' 'palling around with terrorists,' 'willing co-conspirators' is growing more heated by the day. It's language that's compounded by the 'dangerous' commercials McCain is running across the country. It's the kind of language that you use in describing an enemy in wartime. It's the kind of language that not only excuses violence, but encourages it."
  • Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "Just look at the videotapes of the angry, hateful hordes attending these rallies -- screaming that Obama is a socialist; that he's both a Muslim and a terrorist as proven by his 'bloodline' and his name; that his supporters are 'commie faggots'; that he's guilty of treason; underscored by increasing racial invective and even punctuated in one case by a call from an audience member for someone to be killed. These aren't just isolated individuals; these sentiments are common at these rallies and becoming increasingly virulent and enraged. [...] This is what happens when you stoke the fury and resentments of people looking for scapegoats and work them into a blind rage. And they didn't just pop up and start believing this. They're saying this because the core premise of the McCain/Palin campaign has become that Barack Hussein Obama is a Terrorist-sympathizer, being funded by secret Arab sources, who hates the military and the troops. As McCain now asks in his most sinister tone in every speech: Who is the real Barack Obama?"
  • digby: "This is upsetting. John McCain and Sarah W. Palin know that Barack Obama is not a terrorist (well, maybe Palin doesn't...she's Queen of the tribe that believes this crap) and yet they are purposefully inciting people who are obviously dumb enough to believe it. [...] Validating a bogus accusation that your political rival is a terrorist in our current environment is the most irresponsible thing I've seen a campaign do in many a year. They know they are very likely going to lose this election. And McCain certainly knows that the main reason he is losing is because of the dramatic failures of fellow failed Republican George W. Bush. But even knowing that his candidacy was always very likely doomed is not stopping him from releasing this poison into the bloodstream of the body politic, a poison which will be with us for a long time to come. I guess that's what McCain means when he says that Americans should fight for a cause greater than themselves. That cause, evidently, is him."
  • Balloon Juice's John Cole: "The McCain campaign has now sunk to the putrid depths of the Bush 2000 crowd and beyond, and it is to the point it can not be argued. Those shouts at McCain/Palin rallies of 'terrorist', 'treason', 'kill him', and 'off with his head' all have a direct line back to the McCain/Palin campaign. They can not be denied. While there may still be some dim bulbs who need to see some burned effigies and more overt incitements to violence, the rest of us can clearly see the connection here. John McCain may have bear-hugged George Bush in the past, now he is passionately tongue-kissing Karl Rove."

TPM's Greg Sargent: "When is the unhinged frenzy gripping crowds at McCain-Palin gatherings -- not to mention McCain-Palin's own role in stoking that frenzy -- going to become a big story? Today in Wisconsin, a McCain supporter unleashed a long, unhinged rant in which he blasted the 'socialists taking over our country' and referred to Obama and [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi as 'hooligans.' McCain didn't utter one syllable of objection. In fact, he nodded bemusedly at the 'socialist' mention. And at the end of the man's rant, McCain said that the man was 'right.' [...] The point is, McCain is letting this whack-job fear and hysteria ride across the board, and is even encouraging it. That's news, and you'd think it would get some serious and aggressive treatment from the big news orgs."

MCCAIN/PALIN II: Playing With Fire?

Several liberal bloggers think McCain and Palin are veering dangerously close to inciting actual violence against Obama and his supporters:

  • Daily Kos' Hunter: "I'm not sure what it would take to convince Palin and McCain that insinuating another candidate for the presidency might somehow be a secret terrorist is a very, very bad idea. America has had plenty of experience with right-wing militia nuts and paranoid loners over the last few decades; it should be transparently obvious that sneeringly inciting crowds to such an extent is a dangerous game for Palin and McCain to be playing. [...] To put it plainly, inciting right wing crowds to consider an American presidential candidate a 'terrorist' isn't merely dirty politics or otherwise unseemly -- it comes uncomfortably close to implicitly encouraging actual violence. And that 'uncomfortably close' part is putting the most charitable possible face on it."
  • Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "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."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "There was always going to be a point of revolt and panic for a core group of Americans who believe that Obama simply cannot be president -- because he's black or liberal or young or relatively new. This is that point. As the polls suggest a strong victory, the [Sean] Hannity-[Rush] Limbaugh-[Mark] Steyn-[Bill] O'Reilly base are going into shock and extreme rage. McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a 'secret' terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word. But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of [ex-Israeli PM Yitzhak] Rabin. For God's sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first."

MCCAIN/PALIN III: Why Don't You Just Called Him A Thug?

Liberal bloggers are disgusted that McCain's campaign co-chair, ex-OK Gov. Frank Keating, called Obama "a guy of the street" and brought up his past cocaine use:

  • digby: "I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but what we are really seeing is the beginning of a right wing story line about the next president of the United States -- he is a drug user, a foreigner, a terrorist and a traitor. And the importance of that is that it gives permission to the right wing machine to do anything and everything to destroy him. He will not really be president, you see. He will be illegitimate -- a usurper."
  • Oliver Willis: "At this point, with the McCain campaign taking on water and these sleazy attacks getting more desperate, it's only a matter of time before the 'N' bomb is deployed. They've already tried to dehumanize Obama by calling him 'that one', made clear references to him being a terrorist sympathizer, and they can't help trying to push his middle name as a signifier of some dark 'other'."

The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen slams the McCain camp's response: "Now, obviously, Keating's remarks are pretty disgusting, even by the ridiculously low standards of the McCain campaign. But let's also not forget the response from a McCain campaign official, who balked when asked if McCain would repudiate Keating's attacks. 'We didn't ask him to do it,' the aide said. 'He didn't clear it with us, but obviously he's read Senator Obama's books.' In other words, McCain is not only comfortable with Keating's sleaze, he thinks the attacks have merit."

MCCAIN: A Coward At Heart?

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of cowardice because he is willing to attack Obama over his ties to Ayers but not willing to raise the issue during debates:

  • Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "John McCain is such a coward. [...] McCain didn't have the guts to mention Ayers name while face-to-face with Obama, instead waiting until he was safely back in his cocoon of race-baiting rallies and Fox News interviews before going with his latest lie and smear campaign. Pitiful."
  • TPM's Josh Marshall: "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. The tell came this week as McCain unearthed the Ayers story which, for whatever its merits, was fully aired months ago and has no clear relation to the particulars of October other than McCain's collapsing poll numbers. He's on it. Palin's on it. He's releasing slashing new TV ads like this one. [...] 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."
  • Cole: "John McCain is not man enough to own his shit. 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. John McCain would rather hide behind his wife and Sarah Palin than say it himself. 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. He would rather hide behind right-wing bloggers, surrogates, and scummy websites staffed with wingnut welfare recipients like the NRO and the Weekly Standard. John McCain had 90 minutes to bring this stuff up to Obama, to his face, and passed. John McCain is a coward."
  • BooMan: "John McCain is a coward. [...] All this manly posturing by John McCain is disgraceful. He can't back any of it up. He can't even look his opponent in the eye. Barack Obama never posed with all that macho stuff. The economy is going to hell, and John McCain wants to talk about William Ayers. Just not to Barack Obama's face."
  • AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "McCain talks tough about Obama, unless Obama is around. Then, McCain wusses out. There's a growing consensus: John McCain is really a coward."
  • The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates: "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 'palls around with terrorists' he played his position. Don't let these people fool you. Come November, the only tough guy will be the one left standing."

MCCAIN II: Say It To His Face, Senator!

Liberal bloggers were pleased that Obama criticized McCain for being unwilling to make the Ayers attack in person:

  • Benen: "Obama, in this sense, is almost daring McCain to make these attacks directly. He's practically questioning McCain's fortitude, calling him out for using sleazy tactics behind Obama's back, but not to his face. I suspect Obama is baiting McCain for a reason -- he wants McCain to lose his cool, make personal attacks, and try to change the subject away from the economy. Obama isn't afraid of this scenario, he'd welcome this scenario."
  • TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Either way, Obama wins. If McCain goes there in the third debate, no doubt Obama has a well planned reply along the lines Bill Clinton used in 1992. If the McCain campaign backs off, that's good for Obama too."
  • Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "Obama seems to me to be needling McCain, trying to provoke him into losing at least his cool, and possibly his temper. [...] I do not think that this is unfair. For one thing, nothing Obama has said has seemed to me to cross the line into incivility or unfairness. He is trying to provoke McCain not with actual rudeness, but with tiny pinpricks that McCain genuinely should not respond to. [...] For another, it does not seem inconceivable to me that Obama might provoke McCain into a real flash of temper. If that is possible, I would rather know in advance. Leaders should have self-control. It should not be possible to provoke them. If Barack Obama can get inside John McCain's head, there's no reason to think that Vladimir Putin or Hu Jintao wouldn't be able to. One way or the other, I'd rather know up front."

PALIN: She's Been Exonerated -- By Her Own Campaign!

Liberal bloggers are mocking the McCain camp after it tried to pre-empt the AK legislature's report on the Troopergate scandal by releasing its own report exonerating Palin:

OBAMA: Ayers, Ayers, Ayers

Conservative bloggers continue to criticize Obama over his ties to Ayers and other unsavory figures:

  • NRO's Andy McCarthy: "Obama and Ayers worked well together -- happily funding the same communists, socialists, America haters, Israel haters, etc. -- because they were ideologically aligned. Obama is smoother and more marketable than Ayers, but ideologically they're coming from the same place: American society needs drastic change. And if you want to know the change Obama and Ayers have in mind, look at what they did at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Look at Obama's Chicago years, which explains why Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn would host the launching of his political career from their living room. That's where Obama doesn't want to go -- because if voters look there, he's toast."
  • Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "As Sarah Palin has said, this is a man who has been 'palling around with terrorists' like Bill Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn. He spent 20 years going to a radical, anti-white, anti-American church. He had the most liberal voting record in the entire Senate in 2007. In other words, this is a man who is comfortable on the farthest fringes of the American Left. [...] Given what we know about Obama, it would be far less risky to hand a teenage boy a bottle of whiskey and your car keys than it would be to hand Barack Obama the keys to the White House."
  • Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "The next time Barack dismisses Ayers' terrorism with the airy observation that he was only eight years old at the time, keep in mind that John Murtagh was only nine years old when Bill Ayers and his fellow terrorists tried to fire bomb his house and set a car bomb for his father."
  • NRO's Byron York: "To repent, you have to confess your wrongdoing. To be unrepentant, you have to acknowledge your actions and still maintain that you did the right thing. But to avoid prosecution, you have to duck the question altogether. That's what Ayers is doing. In a sense, he's still on the lam. Which might make Obama's situation even worse."
  • NRO's Jay Nordlinger: "There are reasons not to talk about Ayers, Wright, Khalidi, etc. -- not to talk about Obama and radicalism. But there are reasons for doing so, too. And I ask this: If not now, when? (If not us, who?!) After November 4, it will be too late. Isn't now the time to talk about it, discuss it, air it? Let Obama address it? What are campaigns for?"
  • NRO's Peter Kirsanow: "Whether the McCain campaign should stress Obama's judgment/radical associations or the economy isn't an either-or proposition. McCain should do both. And as Stanley Kurtz demonstrates, McCain can do both at the same time. Stanley distills the connection between the Obama/Ayers relationship and the economy as follows: Obama and Ayers serve together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where they funnel tons of cash to finance ACORN --> ACORN pressures banks (through, among other things, CRA-related complaints) to extend high risk mortgages to risky customers --> ACORN also works with Democrats in Congress and others to pressure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to further loosen credit standards, spreading the contagion of high-risk credit practices to the broader financial markets --> Subprime mess -- credit markets emergency."

ACORN: Barack ACORN Obama?

Conservative bloggers are attacking Obama over his ties to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN:

  • NRO's Jim Geraghty: "So we have an organization that has been joined at the hip with Obama from the beginning of his career, whose members have been convicted in Washington state, Wisconsin and Colorado, and had various forms of reprimand, investigation, indictment, and other run-ins with the law and state election authorities in Virginia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Ohio, New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, Michigan, Florida, Arkansas. Perhaps most disturbingly, the organization has repeatedly entrusted convicted felons with voters' most sensitive personal information, sort of a small business assistance program for aspiring identity thieves. Is it time for Americans to tell ACORN to get out of their faces? Or perhaps for law enforcement to get into their faces? Or perhaps some media entity should get in Obama's face about why one of his longtime allies keeps coming up in investigations of vote fraud?"
  • RedState's Dan McLaughlin: "During the 2008 Democrat primary, the Obama campaign paid Citizen Services Inc., a subsidiary of ACORN, more than $800,000, a payment that Obama's campaign somehow managed to misreport to the FEC. As of yet, we can only speculate about why Obama is lying about his involvement with ACORN, what other aspects of that relationship he has failed to disclose, and what other things have been conveniently 'disappeared' from his Chicago past."
  • Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "Why has no reporter asked Obama directly about his history with ACORN, and what role ACORN would play in his administration? Remember, ACORN, when they aren't fraudulently registering people to vote, spends most of it's time trying to place low-income persons in homes they can't afford on their own. Would [Obama] appoint ACORN cronies to FHA and HUD? Would he support increasing federal funding of their group? What role would he have them play in the housing crisis? These are reasonable questions to be asked, but I think we already know the answers."
  • Townhall's Jonathan Garthwaite: "Forget 'Hussein'. I like the sound of Barack ACORN Obama."

ACORN II: A Crime Syndicate?

Several conservative bloggers are accusing ACORN of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to elect Obama:

  • Power Line's John Hinderaker: "It is reasonable to ask whether ACORN is in fact a criminal conspiracy to subvert the voting rights of Americans. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Barack Obama paid ACORN $800,000 to register new voters, and then lied about it, falsely telling the Federal Elections Commission that the $800,000 went to a group called Citizen Services Inc. for 'advance work.'"
  • Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "The pattern seems very clear. Wherever ACORN works, they file hundreds and thousands of bogus registrations. These aren't isolated incidents, but strongly suggest a systemic effort to undermine democracy. Not only should taxpayers not fund such an organization, but the Department of Justice should treat it the same way they treat organized-crime syndicates."
  • RedState's Moe Lane: "I understand that ACORN loooooooves its 'few rotten apples' argument, but when you keep getting nothing but rotten apples from every barrel that you sample, at some point you really do need to look at the way the barrels are being put together. Which is what's happening now."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Ayers, McCain, And The Dow

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat:

"Imagine you're an undecided voter, turning on the news tonight. You hear about the enormous plunge Wall Street took today. You hear about the U.S. government taking ownership stakes in American banks. You hear about a global economic crisis. You hear about the Great Depression.

Then the subject turns to the Presidential race -- and if the news channel behaves the way the McCain campaign clearly hopes it will, the first thing you'll see is a short feature on how John McCain has cut a new anti-Obama ad featuring Ayers, Ayers and more Ayers. It's possible that this inspires you to think: Man, that terrorist-sympathizing Obama can't be trusted in an economic crisis. In that case, Steve Schmidt, Andy McCarthy and sundry others are political masterminds, and I am a plain fool.

But I don't think I'm a fool. I think McCain looks, to our hypothetical undecided, utterly disconnected from what's happening in the world, and the details of the Ayers connection, however troubling they might be in another context, blur away into a broader impression of a flailing, desperate, out-of-touch candidate. At this point, the McCain camp seems to be taking its cues more from the liberal caricature of past conservative campaigns -- that they've all been fundamentally unserious exercises in culture-war button-pushing -- than from the campaigns themselves. It's as though they're being paid under the table by Thomas Frank to goose his book sales and vindicate his thesis."

LEST WE FORGET: Even Little Kids Watch Chappelle

From Overheard at the Beach:

Mom #1 (watching her boy): We originally chose the name Eric, but now I'm thinking we should just call him Rick.
Mom #2: But then he would be...Rick James?
Mom #1: Yes. I think it suits him better.
Little boy (running by): I'm Rick James, bitch!
Mom #1: Maybe we should just stay with Eric.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at October 10, 2008 01:08 PM



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