Obama must sling mud, or he will get buried

If the last 18 months have been a riveting, rollercoaster-of-a-ride in terms of the presidential election, then the last two weeks have taken us on a series of gut-wrenching loops and I’m still trying to find my bearings.

I was one of the record breaking viewers to watch the Democratic and yes, Republican National Conventions. For me, the Democratic offering was a cathartic and emotional experience and it was staged in pitch-perfect fashion for this former Hillary Clinton supporter.

First, I heard from Hillary, who healed many of the wounds from the prickly primary battle. Then former President Clinton came out and shored up my spine for the fight ahead. By the time Obama took the stage at the former Mile High Stadium in Denver, I was a battery ready for a charge and Obama, with eloquence, passion, a sense of history and national purpose; delivered beyond my wildest expectations.

So it is with a slight sense of panic that I witnessed the rollout of Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, the plucky Governor from Alaska. Over the past two weeks we have seen Obama’s post convention bounce erased and McCain-Palin pulling even or slightly ahead of Obama and his venerable running mate, Sen. Joe Biden.

What’s more, McCain-Palin have gone on the attack and knocked Obama back on his heels. They’ve stolen the change message, the history message and let’s face it, the momentum. How? With unabashed lies, repetition and smiles.

Barack Obama has got to learn to fight back and fight back hard. I’m finding it increasingly frustrating to watch his lack of passion and justifiable anger over what is basically the old fashioned snake oil salesman shtick going on with the other side.

Democrats have never been very good at negative politics and that’s why they lose. This has got to change this year; this election is just too important. Folks, there is nothing demeaning about getting down in the mud and fighting it out if you are on the right side of history and to simply rise above it or think that your political sensibilities are better than theirs is a recipe for failure.

I’m reminded of that line from “The Untouchables” where Sean Connery’s character says, “If they pull a knife, you pull a gun. If they send one of your guys to the hospital, you send one of their guys to the morgue.”

Quite frankly, Sarah Palin scares the hell out of me. She’s so far right, so entrenched with the religious zealots, so pro-creationist and anti-science, so anti-choice, so anti-environment and yes Log Cabin Republicans—so anti-gay (just you wait) that any good will I may have felt towards McCain as a former “maverick” has evaporated.

Maybe its because I come out of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) rights movement and was active in the days of ACT UP and Queer Nation, but I learned long ago that just behaving nicely and politely asking for people to do the right thing doesn’t work. You’ve got to mix it up, bloody a few noses, make a scene and call them on their bullshit.

As the first African-American presidential candidate for a major political party, Barack Obama just can’t go into Election Day being tied. He’ll lose. The long primary battle has shown that Obama over-performs in opinion polls and under-performs on Election Day. This phenomenon has been observed before when non-white and white candidates run against each other. It’s called the “Bradley effect” and is named for Tom Bradley, a former African-American mayor of Los Angles who lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite his lead in polls.

So it’s only prudent that Obama have a lead beyond the margin of error and his only choice is to wrest back the message of change, reclaim the momentum and turn this back into an issues oriented election.

Now the McCain campaign isn’t just going to give all of this up—Obama has to take it—and that means hitting back on every single slight—that means knocking the halo off of Palin and attacking her appalling record and antiquated views. If they call him sexist—knock it away with the facts—and then call them on their racial whispering campaign.

The Obama campaign needs to ask themselves if they want to be the noble, high minded statesmen like Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis who lost holding true to their genteel reputations or do they want to be a John Kennedy or a Bill Clinton, who actually got the chance to govern and knew that that could only happen by doing what was required to win.

You can e-mail Colin Murphy at colin_murphy@sbcglobal.net.