A Sickening Feeling

Four years ago, I sat on my living room couch and watched a young politician I'd never heard of give an incredible speech at the Democratic National Convention. I immediately thought, "Where have they been hiding this guy?" I had never felt the combined feelings of awe, inspiration, national pride and hope all rolled into one - and evoked by a politician. And there he stood, calling to our better selves as one nation, as one people.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

He was presidential material then, and even I could recognize it.

The next day we all spoke of the new guy, Whatsitsname. What an amazing speech he gave, that guy, Whatsitsname. Too bad he can never be elected president - he wouldn't have a shot - there are too many racists in this country. Whatsitsname would never have a chance.

"Whatsitsname" was Barack Obama, and he announced his run for the Presidency two years later. Not only was he an African-American running for president, but he would have to take on the most powerful political machine in recent history. How could he possibly compete against Hillary Clinton, the Clinton machine and all her money? The night he won the Iowa primary, I finally believed it could happen. I thought if Iowa could vote for Obama over Clinton and Edwards, then so could others.

And then the smears began. The ugliness reared its head. Obama wasn't like us, he was "different." We heard rumors of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko. We heard a Manchurian candidate theory. We heard that he was hiding a Muslim background, that he was educated in a madrassa when he was a child in Indonesia. We heard that his wife was never proud of her country until her husband ran for president, that he wouldn't recite the Pledge of Allegiance and would turn his back on the flag, that he wouldn't wear a flag pin on his lapel, that he took his oath of office not a Bible, but on a Koran. Veiled and not so veiled racism permeated everything and my euphoric feeling of national pride became one of shame and embarrassment.

But through it all, Obama's message of hope rang through. It didn't matter that the racists were throwing everything they could at him, he was coming out on top. Hope trumps fear. Change supersedes the status quo. We were tired of being beaten over and over again with the fear mongering, smear tactics and lies of the last seven years from the most corrupt administration in our nation's history, and we weren't going to take it anymore. And on August 28th 2008, forty-five years to the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama was accepting the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

And then along comes the "honorable, maverick, war hero reformer" John Sidney McCain III and his peanut gallery of a campaign. Back in 2000, McCain was touted as one of those thorns in the side of his own party, voting his conscience, not kowtowing to the party line. That is, until the Rovian Machine of Destruction turned him into a shell of his former self with a smear campaign the likes of which we hadn't seen before. Up was down, left was right and black was the color of the illegitimate child the Bush campaign accused him of fathering.

But the 2008 John McCain, however much he may have stated that he wanted to run an honorable campaign, remembers the tactics that killed his 2000 campaign, and in a last ditch effort is throwing all of his chips into the pot to try and gain some traction with little more than three weeks left until Election Day. The problem is that he's miscalculated who he was reaching. Moderate Republicans, independents and Reagan Democrats have stopped responding to fear mongering, so the only people he is reaching are the frenzied base whose votes he already had. And boy, has he worked them up into a lather!

John McCain asks, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" Sarah Palin, a transparent vice presidential choice to appease the Republican base, stokes the flames of uncertainty when she says Obama doesn't see America as she sees it; that Obama sees America as "being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The fear chip, the Ayers chip, the mysterious foreigner chip, all politically designed to help decrease McCain's deficit in the polls has only caused a greater schism between the Democratic and undecided voters he's trying to woo, and the ever increasing radical base he is playing to. And at this point in the campaign, if you're still trying to win over your base instead of trying to expand your appeal, it's over.

But I fear it may be too late. The genie of racism has been let out of the bottle. And no matter how hard McCain may try to put it back, the damage has been done. The rage he's let loose, the fear and overt anti-Obama hate displayed at his rallies has truly made this a dangerous situation.

Unfortunately, it was always in the back of my mind that Senator Obama would inherently be in more danger solely because of the color of his skin. This danger has now been amplified by the nasty, hate-filled rhetoric of the McCain campaign, Sarah Palin and yes, the "honorable" John McCain. And there is no way that you cannot blame McCain for it. It's his name at the top of the ticket. He is responsible for the actions of his campaign, whether the idea to go this route was his, or Rick Davis' or Steve Schmidt's, McCain either approved it or went along with it knowing it was the last bullet in his gun. And seeing the hate from the pitchfork and torch crowds has given me a sickening feeling.