Can the Muslim Smear Hurt Obama?*
Andrew Romano
Barack Obama had a good weekend. For starters, he opened a lead of 84
pledged delegates and 200,000 popular votes by crushing Hillary
Clinton in five** straight contests--Nebraska (68-32 percent),
Louisiana (57-36), Washington State (68-31)** and the U.S. Virgin
Islands (90-8) on Saturday, followed by a surprisingly sizable win in
Maine (59-40) on Sunday. He beat Bill Clinton to win best spoken
audiobook at yesterday's Grammy Awards. And he had the pleasure of
watching as Clinton removed campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle (also
chief liaison to Latinos) from her team--a sure sign that staffers and
supporters are worried about Hillary's wobbly bid. The good news will
probably continue for the next ten days; Obama leads by at least 17
points in each of Tuesday's Potomac Primary battles (Virginia,
Maryland and Washington, D.C.), and is expected to win in liberal,
educated Wisconsin and his birth state of Hawaii a week later.
All of which got me thinking about the general election. Sure, the
Illinois senator is a long way from clinching the Democratic
nomination. First he has to survive Ohio and Texas on March 4 and
Pennsylvania on April 22--states that are rich in delegates and far
more favorable to Clinton than February's Obama-friendly face-offs.
Even then, the fight will probably go all the way to the convention in
August (the math isn't rocket science). But if Obama does get the nod,
I'm starting to wonder if he might find it tougher to peel off
Republicans than his rhetoric (and the current polling)
suggests--especially against John McCain. Reading through the comments
on "He's One of Us Now," a story I wrote for this week's dead-tree
magazine, I was reminded yesterday of a pesky little problem that
could hurt him next November: the Muslim rumor.
Over the past few months, it's become clear that there are some shady
people out there bent on spreading the claim----completely,
inarguably, demonstrably false--that Obama is a "crypto-Muslim
Manchurian candidate." It started with a set of untraceable viral
emails, which say that "Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United
Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background" and
ask "Can a good Muslim become a good American?" (the answer, they add,
is no). And it has continued with trolls like "HolyRoller," a
monomaniacal individual now infecting the "He's One of Us Now" comment
board, where he's busy posing questions like "To all you Obama
supporters: Is he Shiite or Sunni?" and lamenting "how foolish we have
become" now that "a large segment of our population wants one of the
[Islamic] devils to be their President"--despite the fact that my
article had nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's religious
background. The Obama campaign has been waging a determined,
low-intensity war against the smear since January 2007, and the
candidate himself has repeatedly weighed in. His typical response?
"The American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit
for."
He's mostly right. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he'll have
plenty of time before Election Day to tell voters that he's been "a
member of the same church, the same Christian church, for almost 20
years"--enough, I'm sure, to reach all but the most willful bigots
(who probably wouldn't vote for him anyway). But what if correcting
the record isn't the problem? After a few months on the trail, I'm
starting to worry that there are swing voters out there concerned
about terrorism who won't be willing to "take a risk" on someone who
has ANY links to the Muslim world--as irrelevant as those links may
be. Over the past two months, I've had at least a dozen people respond
to my rote question--What do you think of Barack Obama?--by worrying
aloud about his "Muslim background." I'm always quick to tell them
that he's not a Muslim, but it rarely makes a difference. Take Vicki
Hercsky, 47, a teacher from Boca Raton, Florida. "Obama, I don't even
know how he got where he is," she told me after a Rudy Giuliani event
late last month. "Why do you say that?" I asked. "He's Muslim," she
replied, matter-of-factly. I stammered. "Well, um, his father was
raised Muslim but was an agnostic by the time Barack was born," I
said. "Obama is a Christian." Hercsky wasn't swayed. "Yeah, but he has
it in his blood," she said. "You can't take away what's given to you.
It's given to you for a reason, and that's who you are. That's who he
is." I'm not sure what she meant by "it," or "who he is"--and I'm not
sure I want to know.
In a general election battle, the macho, militaristic McCain would
make a mighty effort to focus voters' attention on national security.
He'd contrast his experience--"I've been involved in every major
national security issue for the last 20 years, and in some ways the
last 40," he's fond of saying--with Obama's rather light foreign
policy resume. And he'd deploy the phrase "radical Islamic extremism"
whenever possible. In that kind of contest, Obama doesn't want
moderate Republicans--voters he hopes to add to his "coalition for
change"--wondering whether he's "an Islamic sympathizer," in
HolyRoller's ignorant formulation, or even listening to Rush Limbaugh
repeat "Hussein" (the senator's middle name) over and over again. It's
not like national-security voters need to believe that Obama is a
practicing Muslim; they just need to suspect that he's not as strongly
"anti-Muslim" as McCain. I've seen how easy it is to sow those seeds
of doubt--and how tenaciously they blossom. To decide solely on such
irrelevant innuendo would be stupid. But people do stupid things when
they're scared, and after hearing what I've heard on the trail, I'm
not so sure that some of them wouldn't decide that way regardless.
*Changed from "Obama's Pesky 'Muslim' Problem," which was, as several
commenters have pointed out, a misleading headline. I should've
thought longer and harder about the title instead of posting the first
thing that came to mind. Apologies to all.
**Knew I was forgetting something. Thanks to commenter Renata29 for
pointing out my omission.
UPDATE, 5:15 p.m.: Two things in response to the commenters:
1) I'm not working off of Clinton talking points; I'm working off of
my own experience and reporting on the campaign trail, where I've
spoken to dozens of voters over the past few months--and where a
surprising number, as I note in the article, brought up what they
called Obama's "Muslim background" as a source of concern. There's a
big difference between speculating about "hypothetical Republican
attacks"--which you'll notice I never do--and reporting on
conversations you've had with actual Americans whose views of the race
seem to have been colored by these false, bigoted whispers. The
problem exists, and ignoring it won't make it go away.
2) Kenny F writes, "It's not innuendo, it's bigotry. Americans are
queasy now about openly saying that they won't vote for a black
candidate, so this becames a handy stand-in ("It's in his blood??"
Yuck). Also, you forget that there is nothing wrong with a Muslim
candidate, just like there is nothing wrong with an Evangelical one."
He's absolutely right--and trust me, I didn't forget. But if it wasn't
clear from the article, let me make it clear now--there's nothing
wrong with a Muslim candidate. The problem is, a lot of Americans
(sadly) disagree--and as long as they think Obama's father's Muslim
childhood somehow makes the Illinois senator suspect--or even just
less "anti-Jihadi" than McCain--he may have a problem.
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Dems2008/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Dems2008/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:Dems2008-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:Dems2008-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
Dems2008-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder