And the Hits Keep on Coming

Hits as in hit jobs, that is:

The ad, for those who can’t view videos, accuses Obama of supporting legislation, when he was a state senator in Illinois, to teach kindergartners about sex.

It’s a lie:

… The ad shows a dreamy-looking Obama as it says:

Obama’s one accomplishment? Legislation to teach “comprehensive sex education” to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?

In a final moment of subtlety, the ad says Obama is “wrong for your family.”

According to the McCain campaign’s own email, the sex ed claim is based on Obama’s support for a bill, in the Illinois state legislature, that said:

“Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.”

As you can see, the McCain ad says that Obama was the one who pushed the “comprehensive sex education” measure. The Obama campaign has pointed out that the bill would simply add instruction on disease prevention to already existing Illinois sex-ed standards. But the McCain campaign cheerfully turned this into Obama’s support for “learning about sex before learning to read.”

And “civil” and “honorable” McCain approved that message.

A reader at Talking Points Memo is one of many in blogtopia who see racist intent:

Is everyone looking close enough at the McCain ad? I just watched the ad again. There is one picture of children, all of them white (I think – can you tell?) And the next image is of Obama, looking down and over his shoulder, with a smile on his face. But since when do campaign ads show your opponent smiling? It’s always a frown or a grimace, right? Not this time. What’s he smiling about? It’s not subtle. And it’s not an ad about sex education. A black man, sex, and children. I think this ad is more odious than is being acknowledged. Take another look at it!

Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan each have posts up on the theme of McCain’s moral unfitness for high office.

Sully first:

… On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

[…]

… In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country’s safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country’s national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain – no one else – has proved it.

Josh has some thoughts on how we respond to all this:

… I want to return to a point I made a few years ago during the Social Security battle with President Bush. Winning and losing is never fully in one’s control — not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure. It’s easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.

Consider this, from Maha:

The McCain campaign consists mostly of frantically throwing red herrings in all directions, hoping no one notices that John McCain and his moose-shootin’ sidekick have no idea how they might govern. And this is working very well for them, it seems. The American public has gotten so used to content-free campaigns they think this is normal.

Over the years Americans have been conditioned to respect utter nonsense, because they see our national leaders and the “pundits” in mass media respecting utter nonsense. If by some miracle we woke up tomorrow morning in a world where our leaders were engaged in sincere, factual, and substantive discussion of issues, most Americans would be dumbfounded.
[…]
Today’s Republican Party is entirely about polemics. It has nothing to offer in the way of responsible government, either in domestic programs or foreign policy, but fantasy narratives, tired slogans and ideas that have already failed. No amount of real-world examples showing why their ideology is inapplicable to governing can sway them.
[…]
Thus, in November, Americans will march to the polls without having once had the candidates’ stands on issues clearly and factually and un-hysterically explained to them.

It’s true that citizens can learn a lot by reading candidates’ web sites and party platforms, if they bothered to go there. But most won’t. And many have bought into America’s whackjob political culture and don’t see why it should change.

Worst of all, after more than 25 years of nonstop right-wing demagoguery coming at them from every media outlet, Americans have been conditioned into a kind of learned helplessness. Government doesn’t work. We mustn’t even think about using government to solve national problems, because it won’t. We’re on our own. That’s the American way.

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