Throwing Some Mud

It is kind of fun to turn on Fox News or read a right-wing blog to find out how some people in the Republican Party are labeling Barack Obama today. Blogger, Eric Martin, describes this chaos:

This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense.

And don't forget to throw in Celebrity!

No wonder no one is buying this stuff. My guess is that picking just a few of those compatible memes listed would have actually been effective, but the sense that the noise machine is running around like a decapitated chicken grows with each new smear.

All of this plays directly into Obama's best strength: his demeanor. People want to be reassured from their leaders, and McCain has not displayed any stability in this election.

As Andrew Sullivan brilliantly points out about Obama:

And still he's calm. Not too cocky. A little aloof, but very professional. He learnt all of this as a black man in a white country: no sudden moves; no anger. That's how he managed his white mother in adolescence. That's how he manages a white electorate increasingly at ease with him. And, by a massive stroke of luck, that's what voters want right now. In an economy that is melting down, with two wars still raging, they want calm above everything else. They want to know that the man in charge will not panic, will not be flustered, will not blow up.

They need a Valium. They can now vote for one for president.