Not in My Country

As exciting as this presidential race has been – and it’s been the most exciting presidential contest of my lifetime – there is something quite sinister about the way it’s been waged by a couple of candidates, and their name isn’t Barack Obama. Whatever happened to sticking to facts and actually touting your own attributes instead of spending more time pointing out the supposed negatives of your opponent?

In the old days, Hillary Clinton and her surrogates were telling us that she could bring in the vast majority of Hispanic voters, and that’s all we heard. We heard that all the way up until the Texas primacaucus, and then that came to an abrupt halt. That actually had a little merit, but in actuality, Barack held his own with Hispanics, and all of a sudden, he just wasn’t black enough. In South Carolina, Bill Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro both played the race card, and as African Americans flocked to Barack Obama in droves, there went that argument.

We’re now living through a new metric, that Clinton can bring in poor white and white working class voters. Even if that may be true, the manner in which the Clintons and their spokespeople have carried on about their appeal to uneducated or under-educated white workers and how they would never consider Barack Obama is just disgusting. It smacks of racism, and additionally disingenuously presumes that Obama couldn’t even win over those Democrats if and when Hillary Clinton is no longer on the ballot.

Then we have John McCain, whose wife swears up and down that he’ll run a campaign free of negative accusations, but apparently the candidate himself isn’t willing to live up to that promise. It seems that every day, he brings up Reverend Wright and other past associations of Barack, no matter how obscure the reference, and today jumped on the outrageously unfair slam by George Bush during his address to the Israeli Knesset.

There is no stronger supporter and advocate for the State of Israel in this country than Obama, and yet if you listened to Bush and his heir apparent, John McCain, Barack Obama is prepared to sit down and negotiate with avowed terrorists that are not even recognized representatives of countries and will essentially sell this country down the river and of course that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

What has happened to my country? Is nothing sacred anymore? As tumultuous as past presidential contests have been, I don’t think we’ve ever been witness to such obvious divisiveness and outright hatred and prejudice. The Clintons have been redefining this race almost weekly, and have changed their strategy as rapidly as the wind blows. They have made unfair and untrue attacks a staple of their campaign, and although Barack has weathered the storm as well as can be expected, they should have never stooped so low and have now lost the respect of the vast majority of this country.

As far as McCain, I don’t honestly expect much from him, but he seems to have taken his lead from the Clintons and feels that going negative is the way to go. His stating a slur as merely an example and then saying that he wouldn’t bring it up after saying it doesn’t pass muster. He’s desperate. The Republican Party is desperate, and they, along with the Clintons, have felt that they have no choice but to destroy Barack Obama. Sadly, the only thing they do is belittle themselves and cause decent and informed people to witness their behavior and reject it out of hand.

As much as I’m immensely proud of Barack and delighted to see that he’s risen above the attacks and has run a fair campaign while keeping his integrity, I am ashamed of the other candidates as they try their best to bloody their opponent. It is patently obvious that if they had something else to tout, they’d do so. All they apparently have left is to destroy anyone that gets in their way. They will pay a dear price for their failure to run a more positive campaign, and the obvious beneficiary is us, the American people. We will finally get the type of candidate that we’ve longed for and deserve.