Backlash: Six Challenges to McCain's Racist Fearmongering

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted October 15, 2008.

In the minutes following the second presidential debate last week, CNN analyst and former Reaganite David Gergen was gripped by an apparent fit of honesty. Amid the prevailing view that Obama had come out ahead, Gergen warned that it was still too soon to say that Obama had the race in the bag. "I think it's too early to declare victory," he said. "because Barack Obama is black."

Gergen's blunt analysis acknowledged what many Americans know to be true, but have not vocally admitted in this historic presidential campaign. "Until we play out the issue of race in this country," Gergen said, "I don't think we'll know (how Obama's race will affect him)." So much for "post-racial" America. As we see the country "play out the issue of race" in these closing weeks of the presidential campaign, fearmongering attacks from the McCain camp have spiked to obscene new levels. While forced recently to push back against some of the most blatantly racist public remarks about his opponent, McCain is largely responsible for stoking mistrust for Obama, repeatedly calling Obama "too risky" for America, asking "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and approving campaign ads that plumb the lowest depths of racist fearmongering. Even the often-repeated claim that Obama will "kill jobs" characterizes Obama as a predator politician who will endanger Americans.

McCain may be the one who "approved this message," but much of the dirty work has been carried out by the campaign's resident pit bull, Sarah Palin. On Oct. 4, at an appearance at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., Palin warned about the Democratic presidential candidate:

"This is not a man who sees America as you and I see America. We see America as a force for good in this world. We see America as a force for exceptionalism. … Our opponents see America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who would bomb their own country."

The well-documented result has been a chillingly heightened lynch mob atmosphere at McCain/Palin rallies, where McCain's lines asking, "Who is Barack Obama" now meet with shouts of "terrorist!" and "kill him!" At an event in Allentown, Penn., according to MSNBC, "At one point one man could be heard yelling, 'Off with his head,' when McCain spoke about Obama's tax plan."

This "is the Willie Hortonization of Obama," University of San Francisco associate professor James Taylor told the San Francisco Chronicle. Or perhaps more accurately, it is the "Osamafication" of Obama -- a brutal and nasty campaign to appeal to Americans' basest instincts and worst fears.

The following are recent responses to the race-baiting attacks that have come out of the McCain campaign over the past week. Most of the responses come from journalists, including opinions by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who asks whether the country is "witnessing the re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics," and by Carl Bernstein, writing for the Huffington Post, who turns Palin's "palling around with terrorists" charge on its head by pointing out McCain's unsavory -- and by all appearances, current -- connection with G. Gordon Liddy, who, "during the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground … was making plans to firebomb a Washington think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the Watergate burglary, break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican convention." Other contributors include Kai Wright writing for The Root.com, Robert Dreyfuss writing for The Nation, Andrew Lam at New America Media, and more. And for good measure, we've included a video of CNN's Campbell Brown, who this week used her corporate media perch to ask what so many progressives have been saying for months: "So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? … We've all been way too quick to accept the idea that calling someone Muslim is a slur."

-- Liliana Segura, Editor, Rights & Liberties Special Coverage

E.J. Dionne, TruthDig

Are we witnessing the re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?

McCain has clearly become uneasy with some of the forces that have gathered around him. He has begun to insist, against the sometimes loud protests from his crowds, that Barack Obama is, among things, a "decent person."

Yet McCain's own campaign is playing with powerful extremist themes to denigrate Obama. When his running mate, Sarah Palin, first brought up Obama's association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, who has become a centerpiece of McCain's attacks, she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." What other "terrorists" was she thinking about?

Since Obama was a child when Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, and since even Republicans have served on boards with Ayers, this is classic guilt by association.

Ayers has been dragged into this campaign because there is a deep frustration on the Right with Obama's enthusiasm for shutting down the culture wars of the 1960s.

Precisely because Obama is not a baby boomer, he carries none of that generation's scars. Most Americans (including most boomers) are weary of living in the past and reprising the 1960s every four years.

See more stories tagged with: racism, barack obama, john mccain, 2008 election, sarah palin

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