A tale of two faces - McCain Campaign's Fake Hate Crimes while Perpurtrating their own real ones

Update from Greetings: Sunday, October 26
I thought that the Salon article pointed out the distinct issue with those on the far right so ready to use racism to divide the country; with the McCain campaign ready to jump on a false story generated to cause more fear of other races; and with the quiet, steady-handed work of the Pittsburgh police that put truth at the forefront, thus casting light on those who tried to act scurrilously.

I noted the quote from Fox News VP in the article who, while saying that if this were a hoax, it should be the end of John McCain's campaign, his point was that it should cause those who support Obama to rethink that support. My first thought was, if it did happen, I hope they find the person and I hope this woman is alright. My second thought was, "why should it cause anyone to rethink support for Obama?" Although, certainly, I have rethought my support of McCain and Palin because their supporters were shouting such outrageous statements as "Terrorist" and "Kill him" of a U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate who has served honorably, and who might be our future President. This, while, Palin and McCain continued to whip these marginal personalities into a murderous frenzy... personally.

So today I looked up the Fox News (Faux News) website, and thought, "OK... Moody should be talking about what he said... this should be the end of McCain's campaign." But to my feigned surprise, there was no such statement from Moody or Fox.. and there was absolutely no coverage.. even followup coverage. .. of this very dangerous, racist hoax on the part of a McCain supporter.. a hoax which was amplified by McCain's campaign, by Faux News, Drudge, and others. Only reports of "Palin attacks Obama " and other such headlines.

Whoops. We might actually have to do what we said we'd do? Act responsibly? Decry racism in America and race baiting on behalf of one of the candidates?... nahhhhhh

Saturday October 25, 2008 23:29 EDT Salon.com

I was attending the fascinating WebbyConnect conference for a few days, and the campaign got deeply weird while I was gone. Catching up on television Friday I found myself transfixed by wall-to-wall coverage of two female faces suddenly at the center of this presidential race --the expensively made-up visage of Sarah Palin and the sad self-mutilated face of Ashley Todd, the disturbed McCain volunteer in Pennsylvania who claimed she was sexually assaulted by an Obama supporter. In a two-day news environment that was supposed to be a big opportunity for John McCain -- Barack Obama was off the trail with his ailing grandmother --McCain instead faced critical coverage of the shocking sums Palin spent for clothes, hair and makeup, as well as his campaign's role in advancing what turned out to be the totally false tale of a white woman abused by a black male Obama backer.

Should either of these stories be big news? Of course both are a distraction from the big issues of the campaign -- the economy, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think the strange controversies over these two women matter because they reveal a corruption at the heart of the McCain campaign. The huge sum spent perfecting the already beautiful Palin for the cameras is the less disturbing of the two stories, but I would disagree with some of my Broadsheet colleagues: I think it's a valid topic for reporting, analysis and criticism. It shows the insanely screwy priorities of the McCain campaign.

Sarah Palin didn't need the best clothing and stylists money could buy; she needed tutoring and coaching on the issues. (She also needed more vetting in August, and what she really needed was to stay as the governor of Alaska, but we won't go there.) Then there's the class hypocrisy -- the so-called Wal-Mart mom shopping at Neiman Marcus, spending more on clothes in a few days than most women spend in their adult lifetimes. The fact that the highest paid staffer on the troubled McCain team this month is Palin's makeup person is also ludicrous; you can't make this stuff up. But it proves that the campaign values Palin primarily for her star power. Robert Draper's incredible article in the New York Times Magazine makes the cynical emphasis on artifice clearer, and more damaging to the campaign.

The Ashley Todd hoax is much more disturbing, of course -- and what's worst about it is the role of the McCain campaign and conservative media in validating it. A local McCain communications staffer gave out details of the alleged attack that hadn't been confirmed by police. Both McCain and Palin called to console this lone staffer, again before the details of the attack could be confirmed, increasing its news value. Matt Drudge , of course, hyped the story hard. Fox News V.P. John Moody said the attack could lead some voters to "revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee." (Moody also said that "if the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting." We'll be watching for a Fox "Breaking News " alert declaring the McCain campaign officially "over," now that the hoax has been revealed.) Andrew Sullivan rounded up the conservatives who breathlessly advanced the story here.

Why were so many people on the right so ready to believe such a disturbing tale based on so little evidence? Was the story of a violent 6-foot-4-inch black man -- how tall is Obama? --punishing a white female McCain voter too good not to be true? It's hard not to see the troubled Ashley Todd's story, and its reception on the right, as a result of the climate of fear and demonization that McCain and Palin clearly believe is their only hope to win Nov. 4. Todd needs help, but McCain and Palin need to be criticized for helping to advance this story before the facts were in. It's really one of the most despicable things this awful team has done in a pretty lowlife campaign. There's no doubt in my mind that the anti-Obama slurs ("pallin' around with terrorists") that have come from Sarah Palin's lovely and expensively lacquered mouth helped create a climate that leads a disturbed person like Todd to her drama of victimization.

But while these strangely disturbing female faces -- one gussied up with the best makeup money can buy, the other tough to look at, mutilated by self-hate -- visually dominated the news Friday, a parade of male Republicans endorsing Obama this week was the real story. Charles Fried, Scott McClellan, William Weld, Arne Carlson and of course Colin Powell last Sunday -- each laid out a devastating case for why they had to abandon their party, and most of them focused on McCain's irresponsible pick of Palin as a major factor in their decision. Christopher Hitchens likewise came out for Obama, calling McCain "borderline senile" on "Hardball" Friday. The news was weird this week, but still, it's all bad for McCain-Palin.




-- Joan Walsh

Understanding Real America in Wasilla

After a few days in Wasilla, Jason Jones understands what real America is all about.

As Andrew Sullivan noted on his blog: Why does it take a fake journalist to find out the truth about Sarah Palin and Wasilla? Where is the rest of the Media on this?

Confessions of a Phone Solicitor

By GAIL COLLINS

Word comes from Madison, Wis., that a telemarketer named Ted Zoromski quit his job this week over John McCain’s message.

Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican. But when he got the script saying “you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” he packed it in.

“Even though I was paid to do it, I didn’t feel comfortable,” Zoromski told WKOW-TV.

This story, relayed via Mike Allen on Politico.com, struck me because I once worked as a telemarketer, and it is an occupation so soul-numbing that it is hard to imagine that anything could make it worse. I woke up people on the overnight shift who had just managed to fall asleep for the first time in six days. Sometimes, when there was clearly nobody at home, I would just let the phone ring and ring in order to avoid having to call anybody else. Once after about 30 rings, I heard the breathless voice of a man who had climbed down off the roof in hopes that this was the critical business call he had been waiting for all year, the one that was going to change his life forever. Imagine his joy when he discovered that it was, instead, an exciting opportunity to purchase an entire packet of portrait photographs of his loved ones at a special discount price.

So truly, if you can come up with something that would send a telemarketer over the edge, you have really overachieved on the offensiveness front.

For a while, John McCain and Sarah Palin were so over-the-top about Barack Obama that people in the crowds started yelling death threats — sometimes while simultaneously begging McCain to “take the gloves off.” The idea of what they were hoping to see in a post-glove era scared everybody so much that the campaign tamped things down.

Opening for a McCain rally in North Carolina last weekend, Representative Robin Hayes said he wanted “to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.”

In order to pursue that goal as efficiently as possible, Hayes then announced that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” This was an especially unfortunate turn of phrase given the fact that he had begun his remarks by saying he wanted to “make sure we don’t say something stupid.”

All this was a direct outgrowth of Sarah Palin’s own comments in North Carolina, in which she praised the “pro-America” areas of the country. But Hayes had clearly been absent for the day in scurrilous campaign school when they explain that you aren’t supposed to specifically name the anti-American parts.

Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was launching into the Obama/terrorist spin when she suggested that the news media should investigate “the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America.” So far, the only person who’s felt the impact of her call to reinvent McCarthyism for a post-Communist planet has been her opponent, a hitherto totally ignored Democrat named Elwyn Tinklenberg, who was stunned to discover in the following days that he had received close to $1 million in donations.

When reporters first began covering political speeches in the 19th century, politicians were so appalled at the idea that somebody planned to write down what they said that they would stop speaking if a reporter showed up along the campaign route. Today, in the post-macaca era, you’d figure that politicians would be so sensitive to the perpetual presence of recording devices that they’d censor their comments even while muttering to themselves when taking a shower. Not to mention comments made right after they have been made up, offered coffee in the MSNBC green room, had a technician install three different recording devices under their clothing and given a seat in front of a large camera.

But the tone of this campaign has given some of the Republican faithful, even those who are members of Congress, the impression that questioning the patriotism of large groups of the population is now O.K.

Right now, all the polls predict that in less than two weeks, Barack Obama is going to be elected president. The McCain campaign disputes this. Large numbers of Obama supporters are also in doubt, possibly because they keep getting e-mails from their relatives in Toledo revealing that Obama has gone to Hawaii not to visit his ailing grandmother, but to destroy evidence that he is not actually an American citizen.

For John McCain, the best question now is not whether he’s going to lose, but what kind of a country he’d wind up with if he won after a campaign even a telemarketer can’t love.

Palin Apologizes for 'Real America' Comments

From Greetings: So, as they say they can 'reach across the aisle', the Republicans, especially McCain and Palin, continue to try to divide America into "two Americas"... their supporters... and everyone else who they deem "unpatriotic". I refer to one of Palin's debate comments. "Say it ain't so, Joe! (McCarthy)"

Two Congressmen Face Backlash After Their Own Remarks Questioning Others' Patriotism

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 22, 2008; A04

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin apologized yesterday for implying that some parts of the country are more American than others, even as similar comments by two Republican congressmen were causing a backlash that threatened their chances for reelection.

In an interview on CNN, Palin said comments she made last week in North Carolina praising small towns as "the real America" and the "pro-America areas of this great nation" were not intended to suggest that other parts of the country are less patriotic or less American.

"If that's the way it has come across, I apologize," she told CNN's Drew Griffin.

In Minnesota, little-known Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg announced yesterday that he has raised $1 million over the past four days for his House campaign, after Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann questioned Sen. Barack Obama's patriotism and recommended that the news media investigate whether other members of Congress are "pro-America" or "anti-America."

The money began flooding in from across the country after Bachmann made the comments in a seven-minute appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" on Friday. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" she told host Chris Matthews.

The backlash from Bachmann's remarks gave Tinklenberg enough donations to quadruple his television advertising, prompted the nonpartisan Cook Political Report to flip its take on the race from "likely Republican" to "tossup" and inspired a Republican who lost to Bachmann in the party's primary to launch a write-in campaign.

Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is locked in a closely contested House race in North Carolina, has also been criticized after telling a crowd Saturday that "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Hayes initially denied making the remarks, but he was forced to acknowledge them after an audiotape of the speech surfaced.

"I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way," Hayes said in a statement released by his campaign. "I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended."

Hayes had spoken at a campaign rally in Concord, N.C., where Sen. John McCain appeared. The 10-year congressman told the crowd he wanted to "make sure we don't say something stupid, make sure we don't say something we don't mean."

He then went on to praise Palin. "Folks, there's a great American," Hayes said. "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God."

A spokesman for Hayes's challenger, Democrat Larry Kissell, said the Republican's remarks revealed how he truly feels. "Mr. Hayes often talks about being able to reach across the aisle and not be limited by party loyalty," said Thomas Thacker, Kissell's spokesman. "This indicates his hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Kissell is making his second run at Hayes after coming within 329 votes of unseating the veteran lawmaker in 2006. This time, Kissell is better funded, as the national Democratic Party is putting more than $1 million into his race.

The party is also spending heavily to help Tinklenberg unseat Bachmann, who was expected to cruise to victory before her comments.

"This is quite phenomenal," said John Wodele, a spokesman for Tinklenberg. "We were doing fine, we had a good campaign going. But this has got us in a position we never thought we'd be in."

More than 17,000 individual donors sent money to Tinklenberg in the days after Bachmann's television appearance.

"Almost instantly, the first contributions came in, before I could get on the phone and talk to the campaign manager and the candidate to think about what our reaction was going to be," Wodele said. "Then I just realized we didn't need to discuss it because it was going on its own. It was happening, and it was coming in from around the country."

Michelle Marston, Bachmann's spokeswoman, said the campaign has benefited from the controversy surrounding the congresswoman's "Hardball" appearance and it too has received additional contributions, though she would not say how much.

In fact, Mike Gula and Associates, a Capitol Hill fundraising and consulting firm, has sent an e-mail seeking donations to her campaign with the subject line "Bachmann HELP -- Under Fire."

Who's Behind Those Ugly Robocalls from the Republican Party? Freedom's Watch

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro and Mark Murray
The donors who are financing the new multi-million-dollar TV ad campaign arguing against a withdrawal from Iraq include a Who's Who of former Bush Administration ambassadors (to plum assignments like France, Italy, and Malta); a least one of Bush's original Pioneers; the man ranked by Forbes (in 2006) as the third-richest American; and, of course, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

Brad Blakeman, the president of Freedom's Watch, which is running these ads, released the following names as donors to his group. Blakeman told NBC that the rest of the donors are choosing to be anonymous. Freedom's Watch is a 501(c)4 organization, which can collect unlimited contributions and doesn't have to disclose its donors.

Here they are....

-- Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta. Per a White House press release announcing his appointment as ambassador, "Gioia is presently the Chairman and CEO of Gioia Management Company, a management and investment holding company located in Buffalo, New York."

-- Kevin Moley, whom Bush appointed U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva in September 2001. Per the White House press release announcing his appointment, Moley "was a private investor and served on the Board of Directors of five publicly held companies and three privately held companies. He previously served as a consultant to Kinetra LLC, the successor company to Integrated Medical Systems Inc., which Ambassador Moley served as President and CEO. Ambassador Moley was also Senior Vice President of PCS Health Systems, Inc."

-- Mel Sembler, whom Bush appointed as US ambassador to Italy in 2001. According to a State Department bio, Stembler was "most recently the Chairman of the Board of The Sembler Company, one of the nation's leading shopping center developers. He is nationally recognized as an activist in the anti-drug campaign and as a staunch, long-time supporter of the Republican Party and its candidates."

-- Howard Leach, who was Bush's ambassador to France from 2001-2005 and an original Bush Pioneer. Per the US embassy's Web site, Leach is "an entrepreneur, investor and chief executive. He began his career as founder and president of several agri-business corporations. He has served as president and major shareholder of numerous industrial and financial companies."

-- Dr. John Templeton is chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation

-- Edward Snider

-- Sheldon Adelson, casino mogul, ranked as the third-richest American (worth $20 billion) according to Forbes in 2006

-- Richard Fox

-- Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary

-- Gary Erlbaum

-- Matt Brooks

FROM WIKIPEDIA

Origins

Freedom's Watch has tight connections to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the American Enterprise Institute.^[3] The group was conceived at a Florida meeting of the RJC in March 2007 ^[4][5] in part to counter MoveOn.org and help the Bush administration sell its Iraq policy.^[3] It was founded by a dozen conservatives of immense wealth,^[4] most notably Sheldon Adelson, who donated almost all of its initial funding.^[6] Four out of five members of Freedom's Watch original board are Republican Jews, and four of the eight initial donors are Jewish, though board member Matt Brooks said "it would be a mistake to regard the group as having a Jewish direction," and noted that "half of the donors contributing to the group's first $15 million ad campaign are not Jewish."^{[7] [8]}

In 2008, the group became paralyzed by internal problems and plagued by gridlock and infighting, with operatives complaining of Adelson's insistence on parceling out money project by project limiting the group's ability to plan and be nimble.^[6] For example, the group spent weeks working on a package for the presidential election, only for Adelson to decline to fund it.^[6] Some staff members blamed the problems on Freedom's Watch president Bradley Blakeman, who resigned in March 2008.^[6]

Positions

Freedom's Watch believes that President Bush's Iraq War policies should be supported. "More and more Democratic and Republican members agree: The surge in Iraq is working," according to one ad. "Victory is America's only choice."^[9] The group also claims that Iran is a grave threat to the United States and Israel. According to the group's president, "If Hitler's warnings were heeded when he wrote 'Mein Kampf,' he could have been stopped." Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he continues, "is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel." One ad calls Ahmadenijad "a terrorist."^[4]

Board

• Ari Fleischer,^[7][10] a former Bush press secretary.
• Matthew Brooks,^[7][10] executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).
• Mel Sembler,^[7][10] a longtime RJC leader and former ambassador to Italy who helped finance the 2000 Florida recount battle.
• William Weidner,^[7][10] a Las Vegas casino operator.

The original president was Bradley Blakeman, though he resigned in March 2008 after a series of high-level staff departures. ^[11]

Notable donors

Freedom's Watch's donors include:^[12]

• Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation and the fifteenth richest American in Forbes magazine's rankings last year, is the top donor.^[6][3]
• Mel Sembler
• John Templeton, Jr, board member of the Templeton Growth Fund and financier of Let Freedom Ring.
• Kevin E. Moley, former U.S. ambassador to international organizations in Geneva, and a senior adviser to Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign.
• Howard Leach, CEO of Leach Capital and former ambassador to France who also helped fund the Florida recount.
• Anthony Gioia, head of Gioia Management and former ambassador to Malta.
• Richard Fox, co-founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
• Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties.
• Ed Snyder, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers and 76'ers
  

Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama: Meet the Press

Maddow Interviews Doris Kearns Goodwin on Palin's Hate Speeches

Doris Kearns Goodwin compares Palin's hate speeches and audience responses to pre-WWII Nazi Germany in the 30's and pre-integration U.S. in the 60's. This should NEVER be America.

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama

By FRANK RICH

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.

Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.

It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.

From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.

McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.

There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.

Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.

To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.

But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.