July 28, 2008
DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN:
McCain takes aim at Obama’s character (BEN SMITH & JONATHAN MARTIN, 7/28/08, Politico)
As Senator Barack Obama traveled overseas, the campaign against him appeared to take a decisive new turn with Senator John McCain zeroing in on his Democratic opponent’s character.In a year when polls show an easy victory for a generic Democratic candidate, McCain has until now been loathe to employ the tack many strategists see as essential and which anonymous e-mailers and commenters with no apparent links to his campaign have been practicing since last summer: hitting Obama not on his record or his platform, but on his values and person.
The Democrat’s Achilles’ heel in this model is an inchoate sense among some voters that the new arrival on the national stage with the unusual biography—and who’s the first black nominee from either party—isn’t American enough.
It's Northern liberal politics and policies that distance them from America, which is why they rage against William Jennings Bryan, Anti-Intellectualism, Kansas, etc. There's nothing distinctive about Barrack Obama. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 28, 2008 8:52 AM
At one level, yes, there is nothing distinctive about him, in the ways you list.
At another, that he is "black", that his grandfather was purportedly a Kenyan goat herder who was one of the first converts to Islam there, that he is the son of a Kenyan marxist bureaucrat and a radical communist feminist American mother, these are all pretty distinctive.
So, maybe in his policies he is more of the same, if a bit further left, but in his identity, he is very different from Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, Humphrey...
Posted by: Jorge Curioso at July 28, 2008 11:17 AMDad was a farmer and Mom an activist dingbat. You can't throw a rock without hitting similar liberals throughout history.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2008 1:34 PMOnly if you reduce it to a level most Americans don't, I believe.
Muslim Kenyan goatherder versus Presbyterian Wisconsin dairy farmer are pretty different things in the eyes of most Americans.
Granted, the coastals will rate the former above the latter. :-)
Posted by: Jorge Curioso at July 28, 2008 5:08 PMTo facilitate discussions in the comments, we require a name be submitted with your comments.