NO candidate is immune from smearing or swiftboating

[politicasista]

I will keep pointing that out because it's the truth, whether people want to hear it on not.

[beachmom]

1. Some in the MSM have already figured this out

You can use this as ammunition:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070120/OPINION03/701200330/1068/OPINION

LEONARD PITTS JR.

The hurdles Obama has to vault
January 20, 2007

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

President Obama?

No, not yet. But the intention of Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, to move toward that goal seems clear with this week's news that he is forming an exploratory committee to raise money toward a possible White House bid. Count me among those who regard the bid as a foregone conclusion.

snip

While mainstream media have seemed intrigued by, but not obsessed with, the senator's heritage, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the extreme right blogosphere. There, one seldom reads any reference to Obama that does not make pointed reference to his middle name: Hussein. Then there are those who observe that only a single consonant separates his surname from the first name of the Al Qaeda leader who launched the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

It is such nakedly puerile slander that your first response is to laugh. Then you remember how that same blogosphere managed to turn the war hero John Kerry into a "traitor" and the Texas Air National Guardsman, George W. Bush, into a war hero -- and it seems much less funny.

Barack Obama is a black man with a Muslim name who would be seeking the presidency in a historically racist nation currently at war against Muslim extremists. One wonders if there is enough handsomeness, intelligence and charisma in the world to overcome all that.

He's all but admitting that Obama will be powerless against these forces, which is an admission of what any Democrat will be up against. That the issue was not "fighting back" but the hateful phenomenon of the right wing blogosphere itself.

[wisteria]

2. How could he not see this coming? Unfortunately, it does prove the point

no one running is exempt from the slander and the lies.

[politicasista]

3. True,

but some DUers and lefties act like that it can't happen to anyone BUT Kerry, which is false. They did it to Gore, Kerry, and Murtha. Now they are doing it to Obama.

They will do it to anyone.

[sandnsea]

4. It's not the blogosphere

It's the media itself. All they had to do is report the truth. Look what happened when they reported the truth in 2006.

Not to mention, Republicans have been using these hateful ridiculing attacks since long before we had an internet. Certainly since FDR, who they regularly called a communist. This stuff isn't new.

[ray of light]

5. right. it's the media--100%

they try to say that Fox is a network with a 'bias' but there's CNN (that they call liberal) but then when you look at all 6 of the main corporate networks all of them have a Republican/Conservative bias. Then they say that reporters are 'liberals' however if that's true, they don't report the news with a liberal bias; instead they follow the corporation's wishes to smear Democrats and liberals.