Dirt flies; the race tightens

Back in late February, when it dawned on the Clinton camp that they were suddenly on the cusp of defeat, the campaign pulled an astonishing switch. Just two days after Hillary, in what West Indians would call “an unguarded moment,” all but swooned over Obama on stage in a debate (“I’m really, really honoured…” etc) there suddenly emerged a brand new Hillary, strident and hateful (“Shame on you, Barack Obama!”) with her red-telephone ad, all at once talking the commander-in-chief talk and kissing up to John McCain. (This was the moment when Bill rhapsodized about how a general election featuring Hillary and McCain would be a contest “between two Americans who love this country”).

In quick succession, there followed:

The mushroom cloud called Reverend Wright, and Obama not being a Muslim “as far as I know” (Hillary), and Hillary goading Obama to “both reject and denounce” Louis Farrakhan.

The Clinton campaign posting a photo of Obama in Muslim garb, and another photo with his face blackened and squared to give it a ‘threatening’ — read ‘Negro’ — look.

The Clintons pestering superdelegates to realize “He can’t win!” — a code phrase easily translated by Bob Herbert in the NYT as, “Don’t you see he’s black?”

Hillary desperately throwing the tattered remnants of the Clinton legacy to the wind and espousing “hardworking Americans, white Americans.”

With hindsight, it’s clear the timing of this trenchant debasing of the nomination battle wasn’t fortuitous.

The primaries had begun in the racially innocent mid-West and had progressed to the boisterous, mixed coasts and the black South. But as March dawned they were heading into redneck country (the real detritus of Big Money America, albeit its faithful servant): the Rust Belt states, and the white, northernmost states of the Deep South, with their economically depressed, Nascar-loving, flag-waving, guns-and-churches hordes – whom media talking-heads gingerly described as “information-challenged,” a delightful euphemism for ‘ignorant’! – and the Clintons’ last hope, as they saw it, was to really get down and stir the swamps of racist sentiment there.

It worked. Obama fought her to a draw in Texas, but Hillary trenchantly won Ohio and Pennsylvania, losing the cities but overwhelmingly winning the po’white rural vote in both states. And she went on to win West Virginia and Kentucky by such huge margins that, though mathematically her chance of winning had already vanished, it took an unexpectedly close finish by Obama in Indiana, and a massive turnout by African-Americans in North Carolina, to persuade superdelegates finally to break for Obama.

Cut. Cut to the general — and skip McCain’s preliminary, throat-clearing assurance to US television audiences (once in April and twice in May) that his was going to be a clean campaign, with no negativity, no personal stuff. Shackled to GW Bush and his policies, bogged down by GOP demoralization and disarray, and taking hits on average twice a week by the friendly fire of ‘old man’ gaffes by the candidate himself, the McCain campaign was teetering — at one point MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked his talking heads whether they thought McCain would ‘make it to November’ — when, in early July, it took on board, en masse, Karl Rove’s old staff; and ‘the Hillary attacks’ began again, in earnest.

They came like a volley of scattershot, and they ranged from the ridiculous — that it was Obama who was responsible for rising gas prices — to the defensible — that the Illinois senator was a pandering flip-flopper — to flat lies about why Obama didn’t visit wounded American troops while in Berlin. (A McCain ad informed its viewers that Obama “made time to go to the gym” but skipped the troops because “the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.”)

Twelve days ago, McCain really got his heart into it and declared that Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign” (this re Obama’s campaign pledge to extricate US troops from Iraq within 16 months). It’s a pithy-sounding line McCain has repeated ever since, never mind that it effectively charges Obama with sedition.

It’s also a line that plays, of course, to vague feelings in some quarters that Obama “isn’t American enough.”

As a Hillary supporter who’s now supporting McCain told a reporter: “I feel John McCain is a true American and I want to support a true American.” (Asked whether she thought Obama wasn’t a true American, the lady said dubiously, “I question it.” Why? “I don’t know — maybe because of his name?”)
Yeah, right.

Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin explain (‘McCain takes aim at Obama’s character’): “McCain’s new hit on his foe’s patriotism hints at two years of whispered, viral rumours and myths about Obama centred on his patriotism and American values, or lack thereof. The e-mails often have contradictory particulars, but the thrust is clear: Obama, various false e-mails claim, is not really a natural-born American citizen, is not really a Christian, and refuses to pledge allegiance to the American flag.

All this was still euphemism; but it goes without saying that, once Rove’s people arrived in the McCain camp, the elephant in the room would promptly be floodlit; and so last week ‘the race issue’ exploded. A McCain ad ostensibly seeking to diss Obama’s resplendent world trip by depicting him as a mere “celebrity,” showed images of Obama fading into — believe it or not — shots of those two blonde and sexually hyper-active bimbos, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

CNN’s Jack Caffety indignantly pointed out the ad’s transparent intent: viscerally to link the Black Man and the Blondes. And Caffety reminded viewers the same trick had successfully been played against Tennessee’s black Democratic congressman, Harold Ford Jnr, in the 2006 elections. (That ad showed a blonde huskily leaving a message on Ford’s voice mail: “Call me.” Ford narrowly lost that election.)

A subtext of such attacks plays to racist resentment of the ‘Uppity Negro,’ and here Obama may be vulnerable. (This column pointed out a couple weeks ago that Obama, “whose occasional cockiness is noticeable even to his supporters, may need to be wary: the charge of narcissism may secrete just sufficient truth to enable it to take wing.”) Last week, the narrative of Obama’s arrogance landed in the comedy shows: Jon Stewart quipped that, while in Israel, Obama visited Bethlehem, “where he was born,” and David Letterman offered his “Top Ten Signs Barack Obama is Overconfident” (they included measuring his head for Mount Rushmore); not a good sign.

Polls show the attacks may be working. A Quinnipiac poll last week found Obama’s lead had narrowed in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where he lost two, four and five points respectively against McCain in a month. And Gallup showed McCain leading Obama nationally among likely voters, by five points — the first time McCain has led Obama in any poll. (Embarrassingly for Gallup, however, another of its polls published the same day showed Obama leading McCain by 4 points.) So the presidential campaign is now on in earnest. The Rovian dirt is flying, and the polls are tightening.

Obama’s bet, however, was always that America had changed quite dramatically for the better in recent years. If he’s right —and he’s been, so far — mining the swamp now won’t be enough to save McCain.