Cold-Blooded Obama against the Strategy of Fear

There are less than four weeks until the U.S. elections and McCain’s campaign is trying to paint a frightening picture of Obama to the American people through Sarah Palin’s ardent speeches and TV ads.

When, last week, in some campaign meetings, some people called Obama a terrorist and expressed a wish to kill him, alarm bells rang and some members of the Republican Party and high ranking members of Obama’s campaign, including Joe Biden, asked McCain to condemn them.

A couple of days ago one of McCain’s supporters called Obama an Arab, and McCain was forced, in reply, to refer to Obama as a respectful American citizen with different ideas.

McCain has also asked people in a couple of other meetings to treat his opponent respectfully, albeit this request contradicts his campaign’s TV ads that try to show Obama as a close friend with an anti-Vietnam War advocate and terrorist, Bill Ayers. The TV ad shows that Obama has tried to hide his friendship with Bill Ayers. John McCain participated in the Vietnam war and was captured by the Vietnamese.

The radicalization of the elections before the 4th of November by the Republicans was of course predictable. They have done the same in the past, introducing their opponents as anti-American and even socialist so as to stimulate their support base. It has even been suggested that there have been a small number of handbooks distributed which refer to Obama as a Muslim Arab and a Communist. This is frightening for groups that don’t trust Muslims and Communists.

However this time, and contrary to the expectations of McCain’s campaign, the advertisements of ‘fear’ against Obama have not been particularly successful with the polls showing that the Democrat candidate is 6-9% ahead. He has also passed McCain in most states that have no specific leaning towards Republicans or Democrats; Obama has warned several times that the Republicans wish to divert attention from the economy to other unimportant issues.

In recent weeks the great economic crisis has severely affected the stock markets and its first effects are now beginning to impact on the daily life of the American people. This is affecting the political stance of many.

These days two other important issues have diverted the public attention from Bill Ayers. The first is the cheating by Acorn which tried to alter statistics of registered voters: the other is Sarah Palin’s misuse of power in Alaska. Acorn is a group with close ties to the Democrats and Barack Obama was, a long time ago, their lawyer. The Republicans have tried to use this as a campaign tool to lessen the positive attitude of new voters towards Obama.

Obama’s campaign has responded by condemning any form of cheating in the election. Nonetheless, Acorn has supported Obama, and Obama’s campaign made financial donations to the institute a few months ago.

Acorn’s efforts have absorbed over a million new voters in the 2008 elections. This is not a good sign for the Republicans and will create problems for these first time voters.

On the other side, the Joint Committee of Republicans and Democrats are investigating an alleged misuse of power by Sarah Palin to fire a state official for not discharging her sister’s ex-husband from the security forces. Following a long investigation, the Committee announced that the governor of Alaska had broken the state moral code as a result of her personal favors.

This issue should be a warning sign for the government, for if some day Sarah Palin finds her way to the White House, she may repeat this misuse of power on a broader scale. Sarah Palin and her attorneys have tried to link the report of the Joint Committee to Obama’s campaign; but the majority of Republican members of the Committee do not endorse her claims!