I’ve noticed a certain uptick in scaremongering stories and racist drivel about Barack Obama coming out of the wingnut media machine since he started to gain enough momentum that it looks like it’s possible he’ll be on the ballot come November. And while the wingnuts still hate McCain, they’ll eventually get over it. What this uptick really says to me is that they’re gearing up for the day that they no longer have Hillary Clinton to kick around anymore.
Consider the wingnuttosphere a test lab for the mainstream media and its anti-Democrat bias. They try out all kinds of wacky theories to see what will grab the attention of the mainstream media and get pushed out there as fact. So far, they’ve focused mostly on their favorite target, Hillary Clinton, but as Obama gains momentum, they’re starting to hedge their bets and go after him. It’s slow right now, because that sweet, sweet Clinton-hating is a hard habit to break, but eventually they’ll have to give it up almost entirely, with only the occasional fix.
And when I saw that O RLY had magnanimously declined to lynch Michelle Obama over some comments of hers — for the moment — and that the Cornerites had put out the theory that Obama is the product of a secret breeding program of Communist Jewish women and black men (feel the moral panic! Black men with white women! Jewish intellectuals! Commieeeeees!), I knew it had started.
You thought the “Barack HUSSEIN Obama” and the madrassa things were the worst they had? They’re just getting warmed up.
Obama’s problem in the general election will be that, while he is beloved by the press, McCain is as well. He’s not going to be helped by them like he has been against Clinton, whom they hate. So these stories are going to get some traction via McCain-adoring members of the press.
I wouldn’t worry about the press’ relationship with McCain so much as the wingnuts’ relationship with him (i.e. staying home instead of voting) given the huge story in the NYT and Washington Post today about the lobbyists. When it comes to excitement to come out and vote, I see the numbers helping only one party. I don’t particularly think the Democrats need vote-dampening unless Senator Clinton is the nominee, but dampening plus new voters and independents with Senator Obama could lead to a pivotal, bury-the-GOP-for-a-generation election.
I do loathe Reagan and his legacy, but it would be nice to see if Senator Obama at least inherited part of his Teflon coating.
Let’s just hope that it backfires on them the way it backfired on the Clintons. And to some extent, the way that sexist crap backfired on Chris Matthews.
What we find out now is how Senator Obama and his strategists handle a real attack machine. How are they going to handle the attacks on Michelle who they are going to turn into Hillary Redux. Their opponents don’t need it to work on everyone, just enough to tarnish his image and make some of his less involved voters vacillate. The reality is that regardless of his talk about withstanding the Clinton Machine, he has had a really easy time of it up to now. This has been the cleanest primary season I have ever seen and I’m a bit of a junky, both NA and international. If the nature of the candidates hadn’t brought racism and sexism out into the open, the whole thing would have been called a lovefest. The gloves are coming off now that he is the heir presumptive, how he reacts in the next few weeks will be very important.
I have to agree with Norbizness. Perhaps it’s overly optimistic. But still.
There’s no doubt that the rightwing attack machine is going to come after Obama with guns blazing. Perhaps that’s where the dirtiness of the primary will help him — he’s already been practicing how to defuse negative (and largely fake or overblown) stories. But I think that the media’s love of McCain is weakening with each day and each time he votes in support of a Bush policy despite his so-called “maverick” status (a bigger bullshit moniker there has never been).
And, bottom line, I have no doubt that whether the dem nominee is Obama or Clinton, the candidate will face fierce and ugly attacks from the right. The question is who can better defray them and come out the winner on the other end.
I agree with you, but I think this is an understatement. I actually think it’s going to be much, much worse.
Months and months and months and months of the smear-Obama campaign has resulted in the wingnuts giving us this:
1) He’s a Muslim! His middle name is HUSSEIN!
2) His wife, upon having her quote parsed, sounds arrogant!
3) He’s the most liberal voice in the Senate, when you have a sample size of just a few votes!
4) He doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin, offering instead a nuanced definition of patriotism that hurts our heads!
5) While in the 10th grade, he may have known a poet who was a communist!
6) This board of directors he was on once had a communist!
Ooh, boogity boogity. And so much credit for the voting public for listening to this drivel and turning up in droves for Obama anyway.
It may get worse for Obama from here on out, but the wingnuts are gonna have to do miles better than this silliness.
Also, the new McCain story puts all this to absolute shame.
Really? Because I remember everyone saying this when it was obvious the Dems were going to retake Congress…and the best the GOP attempted was Kerry’sBotchedJokeGate.
I think 2004 has come and gone. If the attack machine is going to roll, it’s first got to get out of laughable neutral.
The problem(in terms of why they might not take hold in the traditional media) with a lot of these attacks coming out of the crazy part of the internet is that they add up to a totally incoherent and totally self-contradictory picture; it’s pretty hard to portray someone as simultaneously a godless Communist, radical Muslim, and black-nationalist without appearing exactly as horrendously racists as those smears are.
I am worried about how the press is going to to go after Michelle, though. Especially since this O’Reilly bullshit doesn’t seem to be causing much of a stir outside of the blogospere yet.
D.N., if I might modify your viewpoint just a bit, I would say that the right-wing attack machine is certainly going to get up and running in 2008 just as it did in 2004, the real question is going to be whether the voting public has gotten sick of it yet. If 2006 is any indication, they’re pretty fatigued by it and may be looking for a better option. That’s not to say that the far-right wingnuts won’t have an appetite for that kind of smearing, because they will, but they weren’t going to vote for Obama (or Clinton) anyway. But if moderates and independents can be convinced to view their choice in November as a newer, more positive kind of political debate as represented by Obama vs. the same old Rovian bullshit as represented by the Republicans, I think that breaks in our favor. Your mileage may vary, of course.
And while the wingnuts still hate McCain, they’ll eventually get over it.
Many of them already have. Meanwhile, they’ve suddenly decided that HRC isn’t all that bad but Obama is a dirty leftist commie pinko (c.f. my latest blog post).
OTOH, the media love for Obama doesn’t play as well for Obama as the media love for McCain. Remember most people still think the media is liberal: so the media’s support for McCain plays out as “wow — even the liberal media thinks McCain is good … everybody must like him then, so I’ll like him too” whereas for Obama, the media’s crush means he is just another elitist, out of touch liberal.
And regarding Alex Stone-Tharp’s point: remember most people of any religion are not particularly theologically sophisticated. To many Christians, particularly those who don’t have much personal experience with non-Christians, “Jesus is Lord” and those who do not believe in Jesus do not believe in God, so there is not contradiction between being a “Muslim” and being “godless”.
I think the campaign press’s affection for McCain is more deeply rooted than for Obama. This New Yorker profile does a good job of spelling out why. Basically, McCain allows them more access, and reporters are like any other human beings—they tend to like people who treat them well and make their jobs easier.
You know what? Let it. This election is going to be won or lost through an appeal to independence who probably like both McCain and Obama. I’m willing to take the bet that says those independents are going to react very, very negatively to this type of racist bullshit. We know the conservatives are going to vote for McCain (and I doubt they’ll be more riled up by racist tripe than they already will be over national security and abortion). We know the liberals are going vote for Obama (and I doubt they’ll be more riled up by racist tripe than they already are over the 10,000 year war in Iraq). What we don’t know is what will motivate the independents are former non-voters to go to the polls. A referendum against racism sounds like a darn good motivator to me.
D.N. Nation, the wingnuts are one thing but now that he is the heir-apparrent, we will begin to see the professionals. If they cannot get to him and his past, they will start trolling his family like they did with Jimmy Carter. If you don’t think that he has cousins in Kenya who may be turned against him then you are in for a surprise. Once he played the proud grandma card, he left the gate open for the drunken relative card. (Bush was saved from this by being “the drunken relative who had been saved by the love of a good woman.”) It is still premature for the late October cards to be played but being unaware that they are out there is unwise.
Except he’s had the benefit of the press being on his side for that, as well as the fact that the negatives have all been coming from his opponent, not the press itself breathlessly digging up dirt on their own.
To be clear: not all of these stories are going to take hold; that’s why I called the wingnuttosphere a “test lab.” They throw a lot of shit before any sticks; I’m thinking particularly of the whole Edwards blogger fiasco from a year ago. Amanda and Melissa were attacked with all kinds of stuff — Amanda especially got reamed over her comments about the Duke rape case — but none of it made any impact until the “anti-Catholic” stuff reached Bill Donohue via Michelle Malkin (IIRC), and then he got it onto the networks. And then all hell broke loose.
It may seem like an incoherent picture to those of us who are watching the bubbling in the swamp as it happens, but most people aren’t paying such close attention. And if they’re getting their information from the mainstream media, and the mainstream media is choosing only those smear jobs that fit its narrative, then the picture is a little more coherent.
But I agree that the degree to which this will actually succeed is largely dependent on how much voters will respond to it. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to happen, and that we don’t have to be on guard for it.
I agree with you, but I think this is an understatement. I actually think it’s going to be much, much worse.
I’ve been thinking the same thing for the past couple days. Provided an Obama win, I can guarantee that “Michelle” will become a word as synonymous with “cunt” as “Hillary” currently is.
We can’t seem to handle an independent woman. Such a person thinks, speaks and acts of her own accord. This means that she will make slip-ups, too, as much as her husband does. Submissive women are acceptable in large part because they keep their damn traps shut, therefore reducing the chances of embarrassing her husband. Emasculation is about the worse thing a woman can ever, ever do in this society. And patriarchy’ll make sure she pays for it.
Maybe, but I might have to keep this a Dawg disagreement. The GOP had a lot at stake in ’04- that old “New American Century” and all, and I think too many wingnuts just don’t care enough about McCain in ’08 to put up the smear effort. Maybe it seems this way because the voting public is so exhausted with this nonsense, hmm.
I’m with you here. A fellow Sadly, No!er made the point this morning that every half-assed smear job doled out from the blogosphere is more and more worthy of contempt by moderates, and I think that’s true. The whole “he might have known a commie in 10th grade!” thing…who the F cares who you know and what you do as a 15-year-old? And that’s even if we are to assume that communism is a scary scary bad ooh scary thing in freaking 2008. Both these points tied together and turned into a smear makes it look like wingnet doesn’t think too highly of the voters, and it’ll show, I think.
Criminy. I shouldn’t write posts while talking on the phone…apparently my grammar disappears (not that it was good to begin with). Imagine the same post above…but written by someone who paid attention in 8th grade.
Yeah, anyone who thinks that he’s getting a pass in the press is delusional. I still think he has a better shot against McCain, though. Because it’s about offering a choice to the public. Democrats do better when we have high voter turnout. Pitting one perceived establishment figure against another is how to lower turnout.
But I have a feeling people will wait in line all day to vote for Barack Obama. Call it a hunch.
Which isn’t to say that everyone in that line voted for Obama, of course. The march was a stand on principle. But I can’t help but think that the racist impetus for voter suppression (Jim Crow never died, it just was restrained) tactics like this will meet up with the potential to elect the first black President, and that’s just simply going to create this sort of powderkeg effect. Hanging chads and irregular voting machines are very sexy issues, but at the end of the day, we lost two presidential elections in a row because they were close enough to steal, and Jim Crow tactics were probably the major factor. With that in mind, I feel we’re going to see a convergence of factors that could make this the election that really changes things.
Damn, Amanda. That’s inspiring.
I definitely don’t want to take away from this great discussion, but the things that people are saying about Obama are starting to boarder on insane.
If you haven’t checked out this website, its terrible: Barak is apparently the antichrist.
I realize that reading this crap is very similar to watching reality tv, but I think sometimes you just stand by with your mouth a gap and wonder if you really want to live in this country.
Best quote from the blog: I’ve read the left behind books…
The antichrist?!
Voltaire claimed to have only ever made one prayer:”Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.”
Republicans know that their only possible hope of winning the White House this year is to fling so much shit that disgusted moderates and independents stay home, because there’s no way they’re going to vote for McCain. So, yes, this is only the beginning of a shitstorm the likes of which we’ve never seen before. What they did to Kerry in 2004 is going to look like a playful slap on the butt.
The one thing that has me hopeful is that Republicans don’t seem to have the ear of moderates and independents the way they used to — people are ignoring the MSM and turning out in record numbers for the Democrats. It’s going to take a LOT to torpedo the Democratic candidate and their old tricks just don’t work the way they used to. Fox News is bleeding viewers; right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck barely beat out infomercials for ratings.
They’re going to be screaming as loud as they can, but will people listen to them?
Personally, I think the best quote from the ‘Barack Obama Antichrist’ blog is: “I am not an extremist”
uh-huh. sure.
They? By “they” do you mean the 3 clinton staffers who where fired for spreading the madrassa slur, or Bill Shaheen, clinton’s New Hampshire campaign co-chair who tried to label obama a drug dealer, or fmr sen bob kerrey who called him a “steatlh islamic candidate”, among other things.
of course, these things weren’t worthy of a post on feminste.
Manju, if you’re unhappy with the discourse on Feministe, you will probably find more accommodating quarters elsewhere.
Although the Democrats may try, as manju alluded to, no one can top the Republicans for smearing their opponents. While accusing McCain of raising his half-black love child hit a new all-time low, the Reps outdid themselves by dredging up some resentful, spiteful, weren’t-anywhere-to-be-seen-when-the-shit-went-down Vietnam War vets to produce the swiftboat campaign to negate Kerry’s war heroism. But the real masterstroke was the surfacing of the planted faked evidence of AWOL W’s stringpulling to get into the Air Guard and then walking away when it served his purpose. Even if the real documents had been produced the next day, the FUD created would have kept W.’s candidacy alive.
When, as seems likely, Obama has secured the nomination, he should similarly figure out and defuse the worst stories about him that the Reps are likely to come up with.
Suggesting that candidate spouses should be put off limits would seem prudent for McCain, considering that Cindy’s drug addiction drove her to steal drugs from the charity she set up. Michelle’s “really proud” is not on the same page as that.
well, sorry for the snark zuzu, it’s your cocktail party and i don’t want to be rude to the host, especially while I’m sipping a martini.
i guess i could go over to michelle malkin’s place, where she’s sure to cover the clinton’s dirty tricks but probably won’t touch o’reilly’s comments. but i guess the point is wingnuts and netroots have more in common than we’d like to admit. pogo is right, we have met the enemy and it is us.
Oh, *do* forgive me for not covering the primaries as obsessively as you would wish me to.
Some of it is taking hold in the less-intellectually curious non-MSM or blogging world too…I was at a gathering this weekend when an Obama commercial came on the TV and one person said, “He scares me. Isn’t he a Muslim?”
I tried to squash that (and tried to introduce the concept that Muslim does not automatically mean terrorist/evil, but I think that would have blown her Baptist mind) without giving in to my temptation to strangle her, but I think she had already made her mind up not to like him. She wouldn’t be voting for a Democrat anyway, but I’m still seething over it.
It’s already pretty ugly, and I’m afraid it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I got the “Obama is a Muslim and he demanded to be sworn in on the Koran” nonsense from a friend of mine too (though in my case, it’s not a friend I’d ever thought of as being particularly bright). I did my best to set him straight, but from now on, whenever someone tells me Obama is a Muslim, I’m going to respond, “Oh my God . . . he is? . . . I can hardly believe . . . that . . . is . . . AWESOME! Hells yes, finally someone will bring the colonialist infidels to heel!” just to see what their reaction is.
They’re mixing Obama up with Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who did take his swearing-in picture with his hand on a Koran from Thomas Jefferson’s personal library. (Reps and Senators take their oaths as a group without putting their hand on anything, though some of them later take pictures with their hand on a Bible or another book important to them. Some use the Book of Mormon.)
[...] the Right rages at the NYT, zuzu at Feministe sees the beginning of something really ugly: So far, they’ve focused mostly on their favorite target, Hillary Clinton, but as Obama gains [...]
I’ve got news for all you on the Obama bandwagon – I am a Hillary supporter and if she does not get the nomination I will be voting for McCain. He is moderate enough to garner my vote. I absolutely refuse to vote for Obama. And there are alot of me out here. Obama is in for a rude awakening if he thinks Hill supporters will vote his way. I will bet all those white men voting against Hill now will be voting for McCain in November.
You can write off part of his Muslim culture, but I am not. It is quite unbelievable how easy people are being on him in general and getting told they are racist or prejudice for saying anything. People have a right to question. It bothers me that people who came to the U.S. as small children, become citizens, are raised in the U.S., and are completely American have no chance to run for President. Yet someone born in the U.S. and studies abroad for a number of years can become President. Plus this cult following is really turning me off, particularly in a religious way. It seems too good to be true. Overall I think this guy is incredibly smart and calculating being that he planned his life on a path to the elite legal and political food chain.
A) He’s not a Muslim, even if his father was;
B) Even if he were, so what?
Did you have this problem with John Kerry? Or, for that matter, with John McCain, who was a Navy brat born in the Panama Canal Zone and raised abroad for some of his life?
I don’t understand how where he was raised or his father being a muslim means anything unless you’re saying those kinds of things will negatively effect his policy making decisions. I don’t give a damn where someone spent some of their life, what religion their parents were or how some of their followers can be characterized, I vote for the person that bests fits my stance on the issues, the person I believe who will best be able to simultaneously work within our system and change it for the better, thats all there is for me, end of story. If you want to get caught up in media characterizations of each candidate and the role the media will force on each of the major candidates, more power to you.
I have other issues that propels me not to vote for him. Has he even visited Iraq (McCain and Hillary have been there several times). He talks about withdrawal, but how can he make any assessment and understand what needs to be done without ever having visited the place. I would not want another Bush – someone who will need to rely heavily on advisors because of lack of experience.
Has he served on any committees?
He is severely naive if he thinks major conglomerates of business and health, energy, etc. industries will negotiate in an open forum for the public to see. There are reasons for doing things behind closed doors and they are not all corrupt. These are power players and they might not even sit at the table if it will paint them in a negative public light.
He claims to be moving people to vote and get active, but one can say that Hillary is doing the same thing because people don’t like her.
Obama visited Iraq more than two years ago.
He serves on four different Senate committees.
I found this out in less than 30 seconds’ worth of Googling, urbanartiste. Try to keep up. Your willful ignorance is not Barack Obama’s fault.
Hey, another reason to vote for him!
I am hoping women’s history month will give Hillary the boost she needs in March.
Well, I guess we should all be thankful you’re not waitng for Islamofascism week to bring Obama down.
First of all, Barack Obama Jr. barely knew his father, so his father’s religion probaby had little effect on his. Not to mention that unless we’re planning on a Huckabee-style theocracy, or turning the US into an Islamic state, who cares what the personal religion of the president is? Didn’t waves of immigrants come to the US specifically for freedom of religion?
McCain is no moderate. In the Senate he has pushed to confirm conservative, anti-woman judges for federal courts. He has said that he will nominate Supreme Court Justices in the model of Alito and Roberts. If you want a continuation of the Bush administration, including the chipping away at women’s rights, eternity in Iraq, and bombing of more soverign nations, McCain is your man.
I voted for Clinton, and I haven’t been so impressed with the Obama obsession either. I have some reservations about his inexperience. But I also think he’s smart enough to surround himself with the advisors who will help him. I’m less worried about his short time in the Senate than I am about long-time Senator Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran. Remember that one?
I’m sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine:
To see the fact that a candidate has studied abroad and is well versed in another culture as a negative is absurd.
aah, sorry about the bold.