You're right, they should...but they have their hands full just on defending African-Americans from charges of being fundamentally unpatriotic ("Black folk caused the subprime mortgage mess!") and doing the same with liberals ("Liberal Democrats in Congress caused the subprime mortgage mess!").

Obama does have the opportunity to do the right thing here.

More at Zandar vs. The Stupid.

Hi Booman, I agree with your writings above, this whole direction of McCains has disturbed me greatly and I fear the Rep. nut base.
I had this discussion with my sister months ago when she asked if O was a muslim, I said no, but why should that make a difference in this land of religious freedom, nor should it make any difference if he is of Arab descent..  Should I amend my words  to say land of Christian religious freedom.
By the way I think that lady in the audience was trying to think of Muslim and could only come up with Arab.  Dana Bash talked to the lady later and she still insisted he was Arab.
On another topic, I was just listening to Sarah, the unrepentent, today and she is now bringing up Obama's stance on abortion.  She says he is for all and any abortions, and that people shouldn't have to be saddled with a child they do not want.  So that apparently is the new direction to replace the terrorist connections.  Baby killer, I think will be the new rant.  Does this have any legs insofar as his actual words.

Click here to step into the Village Blue2

Well said.

As you note, the Dems haven't exactly been at pains to distance themselves from these premises either. Anti-Muslim racism is possibly the last remaining 'acceptable' form of racial bigotry, and to the extent that it has facilitated U.S. aggression against Arabs and Muslims elsewhere, its victims number well over a million, at least. There really is no excuse for not challenging it in the most direct and uncompromising terms.

Boo --
Wrong link to TPM -- it goes to their story on the Palin investigation.  

I think you've got several good points regarding McCain's argumentative warrants -- but want to go back to the video TPM supplies, which really is psychologically interesting in all kinds of ways.  

That's a guy that's pissed off in at least five different directions:

1.  Obama;
   
2.  The GOP powers-that-be that told him he's killing the other party candidates, so stop throwing gas on the fire and take his whipping like a man;
   
3.  The rubes that he has to cater to but not incite to riot anymore, an almost impossible dilemma;
   
4.  Himself for having got into this situation;
   
5.  Palin, for a. the report that's about to come out and b. being more popular than he is and c. everything else.
   

I'm sure there's at least a couple more.  Oh:

6.  The media for running with the Nuremberg Rally story more than Ayers;
   
7.  Daddy's sperm not making him taller;
   

5d. not letting him cop a feel, at least a little one on the sides;
8.  America as a whole.

There's still probably a few more, but I'm going out to breakfast.  

Maybe some of the media b.s about "McCain's authenticity" comes from the fact that he's not very good at screening his facial expressions.

In order for people to disregard their own interests there has to be some "us" to which they sacrifice their interests. There can be no "us" without a readily identifiable, utterly other and hostile "them." Thus, if the target audience considers themselves to be Christian family-oriented people then the "them" must be castigated as the polar opposite, so today Emmanuel Goldstein is an Muslim of Arab descent...

The Underground Railroad

Thank you very much, BooMan, for saying this, and for saying it so well.

My immediate reaction on seeing that clip was that exactly what McCain was saying was "He's a decent family man, so of course he is not an Arab". That verbal expression is an indicator of the kind of thinking that has subliminally embedded itself in the American psyche, and is now reflexive, even for a huge number of people who actually know better than that.

Most Americans don't hear anything wrong in "he's not an Arab, he's a decent family man". But their reaction would be quite different if you inserted "black", or "Asian", or "Latino", or "Jew". At the very least they would notice something they don't notice when the comment is about an Arab or a Muslim.

Poor John McCain. He has sold his soul to the devil. He is under the spell of the very same Rove/Schmidt/smear cabal that years ago viciously attacked him and spread rumors that he had collaborated with his North Vietnamese captors and then fathered a black child out-of-wedlock. McCain's desperation for power has thrust him to into the arms of his former defamers.  His embrace of the dark side has led him to become the very essence of what he pontificates to be against. Now he stokes dangerous lies and evil prejudices in his pathetic lust for power.

But this has not been McCain's only lapse of judgment. He has often been seduced by the dark side: such as by those who would criminally plunder the American political/economic system. His economic mentor has been his former campaign manager, Phil Gramm, a lobbyist for foreign financial interests who works ceaselessly  to deregulate our system so his buddies can plunder it and even enjoys mocking those who are hurt in the process as "whiners." Before Gramm, McCain was a sycophant and toady for the criminal financial swindler, Keating, who would fly McCain and his wife on vacations in return for McCain's help in keeping the regulators off his back. McCain and his wife enabled Keating to pull off a catastrophic financial scandal that destroyed many innocent lives.

But the true tragedy of McCain's moral shortcomings is not his own pathetic lust for fame but in those who have enabled McCain to bamboozle the American public into thinking he is an honorable man. The true tragedy is the cowardice or ineptitude of people like Obama and Biden who keep insisting McCain is an honorable and worthy opponent. Obama and Biden never once point out in their speeches  McCain's moral and ethical unfitness for higher office. Thus they give credence to McCain's posturing as some great moral hero and hence of the veracity of his concerns.

The great national question of this campaign should obviously be as to McCain's moral fitness to run for office. And the duty of anyone responsibly running for office is to point this out to the American people. Instead, because of total ineptitude (or cowardice), the national question is as to some silly inconsequential brief relationship of Obama with an ex-radical on some Chicago school committee. (And don't bring up in the campaign's defense some obscure link to an overly long college lecture type video on the Keating scandal - that is not bringing the issue to the table.) The only thing saving the Obama/Biden campaign from its own blunders is a world economic collapse and that is the true tragedy of our present election.