The Nation.

Smearing Obama

By Ari Berman

This article appeared in the March 31, 2008 edition of The Nation.

March 13, 2008

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  • It's a shame that so honorable and decent a man as Barack Obama has become the target of such paranoid viciousness. I suppose some people hate him because he has made Hillary Clinton look like quite an average person and politician; in any other election cycle, she would be seen as royalty.

    Is it possible the Clinton campaign has had a hand in the character assassination of Senator Obama? When you consider the "3 am" commercial, the 60 Minutes line that he's not a Muslim "as far as I know," the pictures the campaign circulated of Obama in African garb, the setting up of a 527 originally for the purpose of attack ads, the running of a TV commercial that depicted Obama as a much darker-skinned man... then the question doesn't seem so far-fetched.

    Several news organizations have already established that Hillary Clinton would need to win 64 percent of the popular vote of every remaining primary just to pull even with Obama in pledged delegates. Thus, her only hope of winning the nomination rests with the superdelegates overturning the will of the voters. Would she thus not have a huge incentive in sullying Obama's reputation? For that would be the one foolproof way to get the superdelegates to reconsider whom the nominee should be.

    John Nunn

    New York, NY

    03/20/2008 @ 11:24am


  • Mr. Berman has it all wrong. We are not "smearing" his messiah, just peeling back the façade to see who this man is. The fact that the man behind the curtain is not the man Mr. Berman, and The Nation, idolizes does not make me a racist or even mean. Just honest. Something Mr. Berman and The Nation needs to be able to lay claim to also.

    Mr. Obama truly makes me sick, but he pales in comparison to those of you who lay claim to being "progressive" or concerned about typically forgotten peoples or issues (i.e., poor women, children, the environment etc., etc.) because he is simply a bad man with a self-serving agenda, and it is people like you that give him power. Without you, he would be the nothing he deserves to be.

    I want you to print this letter so that one day, perhaps, people will be able to look back and say that one girl said no. She said no. The only problem is that no one listened. And on Judgment Day, if such a day exists, I want to be there when you have to listen. Of course, then it will be too late.

    Jennifer Beegle

    Houston, TX

    03/17/2008 @ 11:01pm


  • What the secret war against the Obama candidacy, whether from the extreme right or the Clinton center, proves is that despite its fine beginnings, the Obama phenomenon is not hard evidence that we are overcoming racism in America. States with small black populations are voting for Obama but states with populations of whites who have lived in proximity to blacks are not. Evidently integration and diversity are no guarantee of tolerance.

    When faced with a choice between gender politics and racial politics, who knows how Democrats will vote? The country as a whole, however, may well prefer McCain to either tainted Democratic candidate.

    The most promising thing about McCain is that despite his pro-war rhetoric he is close to General Petreus and the general has expressed doubt that the Iraqi politicians are either able or willing to meet American expectations. Don't count on McCain continuing the disastrous Bush policy once he is in the White House.

    Norman Ravitch

    Savannah, GA

    03/16/2008 @ 12:50pm


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