As the Campaign Gets Uglier....

I was traveling this past week, so I lost track of the news to a certain degree. A week ago I was blogging about how things were about to get ugly in the campaigns, in particular that the McCain campaign had pre-announced his intention to go negative. Well, it has happened. In spades. And it reminds me of October of 2004, when the Bush campaign pounded the bajeezers out of Kerry. This is about bringing up Obama's negatives. They will keep this up as long as they think it is necessary/helpful.

McCain's ads have gone to 100% negative and Obama's to 35% negative. And I'd say that McCain has gone too far, with his basic question of "Who is Obama?" raising a whole bunch of racial, religious, and other strongly-held fears. Here are a couple of examples, have a look:

The McCain campaign on the ground in Virginia:

"With so much at stake, and time running short, [Virginia Republican Party Chairman Jeff] Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii." In Battleground Virginia, a Tale of Two Ground Games - Karen Tumulty

The invocation before Sen. McCain's speech in Davenport, Iowa Saturday morning:

"I also would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god--whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah--that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and election day.'" A Religious War In Davenport? - Marc Ambinder