McCain Campaign Now Officially Racist

There comes a time when one observing a political campaign must acknowledge when a campaign begins to define itself. In this particular case, it seems that the McCain-Palin campaign has definitely determined the direction it will follow for the rest of this campaign, now down to 26 days. Quite sadly, it has decided that it could not compete with the Obama-Biden campaign on any legitimate issue once the economy turned south, and that their only chance of regaining lost ground is to turn to character assassination and yes, to become a racist campaign.

There are now just too many examples of this fact. We can start with McCain’s refusal to look Barack Obama in the eye or even acknowledge him at the first debate. If that’s not racist, it’s certainly condescending and contemptuous. But in this week’s presidential debate, McCain referred to Obama as “that one,” and that I would interpret as a dismissive put-down that given the tenor of the campaign that McCain-Palin are running, I would now call a racist gesture.

Sarah Palin the other day said that Barack Obama just doesn’t look at the country as “the rest of us do,” which I have no choice but to presume she means white people. She and McCain both have referred to Barack as being someone of an unknown quantity, someone whom we should be frightened of, and Palin said that he “pals around with terrorists.” At every opportunity now, the McCain-Palin team seems to remind their screaming crowds that they need to be very fearful of someone like a Barack Obama because of who he is, and they seem to have incited their audience to agree with them at a fever pitch.

At two of their recent rallies, law enforcement officials, one still in uniform, used Obama’s middle name, which might as well be followed by “the Muslim,” because that is what that is meant to imply, and the one man yesterday said that one cannot imagine waking up on November 5th and realizing that a man named Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama had become president. People at McCain-Palin rallies are now yelling epithets like kill, terrorist, treason when Obama’s name is mentioned by one of the candidates, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find someone attending one of their rallies with a noose or other symbol of old-fashioned hatred of blacks and outright racism.

If I saw one shred of an attempt by John McCain or Sarah Palin to tamp down on the frenzy that they’ve created in their crowds and to steer them back toward the issues that affect our daily lives -- healthcare, the economy, immigration -- maybe I’d feel differently, but when I see people in the crowd during the question and answer session imploring McCain to attack Obama more strongly and nail him to the cross and McCain agreeing to do just that, I can only draw one conclusion. John McCain and Sarah Palin are racists, full of hate and this is exactly where they wish their campaign to be.