Jun 11 2008
Obama getting ahead of this election’s swiftboaters
US elections: Barack Obama recruits team to tackle web smears | World news | The Guardian
Barack Obama is recruiting senior staff to a new unit which will combat virulent rumour campaigns on the internet that threaten to cost him votes in the presidential election against John McCain.
This is one of many very smart moves by the Obama campaign. Kerry earned no points by ignoring and avoiding the smears of the Swiftboat Veterans for Peace in 2004 and it’s reasonable to assume that Obama will earn nothing by pretending that the secret Muslim Internet smears will have no impact. These things must be dealt with. They must be addressed. And the people that spread these types of lies must be thrown into the spotlight and shamed for the dirty tricksters they are.
And for those of you that think that the people that believe these types of things are hopeless and few, I, myself, was confronted with someone just two weeks ago, someone I like and respect, who actually repeated the extremely old and debunked “Obama went to a madrassa” rumor as if it were fact. These things matter. We cannot afford to pretend that they don’t.
