As an Obama supporter, it feels like I'm always defending Obama's honor against racial slurs and ugly distortions. Today, I've reached my limit. There's something fundamentally wrong with republicans who are using these tactics to smear Obama. As they smear Obama, they're also smearing me, a voter, a citizen of the United States.
McCain and Palin are unprofessional, dishonorable and unworthy of the positions they're vying for. They're not patriots because they divide people. Oh, and they've also proven themselves to be incompetent.
David Mendell, biographer, has the courage to defend Obama, despite being called a "sympathizer," in the name of truth.
Mendell: Yet, over the past 14 months, ever since the release of my biography of Obama, I have fielded countless questions about Obama that clearly have been based in ugly racial or religious distortion, and I have felt it my obligation to help set the record straight. In doing so, occasionally I have been accused of being an Obama sympathizer. But if that's the price of spreading the truth, so be it.
On Saturday, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," a reference to Obama's acquaintance with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam War-era militant Weather Underground. This Swift Boat-style smear attack has been going on against him for more than year—but until now, we've just never heard it directly from the mouth of a political opponent.
"Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance," Obama responded.
....
But a word to McCain's strategists: I think that any sustained effort to de-Christianize or de-Americanize Obama eventually will backfire. I believe that, deep down, Americans want to cast their votes not on fear, but on knowledge. Particularly at this precarious moment in our history, when we are staring at the potential collapse of the country's economic system, I have to think that voters will grow just as weary of these kinds of distortions as I have.
I hope that with every attack, Obama gains momentum until election day when Barack Obama is overwhelmingly named our new and worthy president. Then McCain and Palin can go suck eggs in Alaska.
