Fighting Smears

Because the fundamentals are so impossible for Republicans to overcome this year, and because John McCain doesn't put a thrill in anybody's heart, the only hope for his campaign is to make the election relentlessly and unceasingly negative. He basically signaled as much today.

GOP presidential contender John McCain says he can't control every attack ad aimed at Democrat Barack Obama and fully expects he'll face a similar barrage, sounding the bell for a raucous general election brawl.

"I can't be a referee of every spot run on television," McCain told the Herald in an exclusive interview. "I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, but we all know there are groups who want to attack me."

The Arizona senator's hands-off posture on attack ads by now-infamous tax-free and unaccountable political groups called 527s marks a softening of his view on the negative campaign tactic -- and opens the door to a no-holds-barred five-month scramble.

He's just throwing up his hands. There's nothing that the leader of the GOP can do, you see. It's just very saddening to him. Tsk-tsk-tsk.

Almost immediately, we've had another foray into the low road, with Fox News labeling Michelle Obama as "Obama's Baby Mama" (which is basically a ghetto term for unwed mother). By November, an attack like that is going to look like patty-cakes.

The Obama campaign is finally coming around to notice that this is a major problem, and not from the Fox Newses of the world, necessarily, but from the under-the-radar attacks that bubble up from blog comments and forwarded emails. They've inaugurated Fight The Smears, a website similar in tone to Hillary Clinton's "Fact Hub," which is designed to debunk false information that lurks throughout the Internet. The best part of it are the tools to allow users to forward the truth on to friends and neighbors through email or social media. We've already got one smear knocked down today, and I don't know if Obama's website contributed to this or not, but it makes a mockery of the whole "Obama's not a real American, show us the birth certificate!" trash that's been floating out there. Turns out he was born in Honolulu, and his name is indeed Barack Hussein Obama (why would any politician in this day and age change it to THAT), just as has been publicly known for his entire career.

This is going to be an effort for every progressive right on up to the election. It's going to be exhausting but those are the rules of the game.