Legal Commentary

McCain Goes Dirty

By Jeralyn

The Washington Post reports on the smear campaign on multiple fronts Sen. John McCain has launched against Sen. Barack Obama. Most are clearly swift-boating.

Take this one. In the Illinois Senate, Obama voted for a bill that allowed school boards to determine appropriate sex education courses. It didn't specify what kind of program or what ages would receive it.

Kindergarten teachers were given the approval to teach about appropriate and inappropriate touching to combat molestation.

The McCain advertisement calls it "Obama's one accomplishment" in education: "legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners." "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama, wrong on education, wrong for your family," the ad concludes.

So, John McCain opposes teaching kindergartners how to recognize molestation. John McCain doesn't care about preventing sex assaults of children? If I were a parent of a kindergartner, he wouldn't get my vote based on that alone.

Let's face it. These attacks only matter in the swing states. McCain already has the evangelicals, the radical right and Republicans.

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Obama may fight for the independents by staying above the fray. Politically, that may be what he needs to do. But I'm not a politician or a strategist. I'm a voter, a citizen and a Democrat. I want competent leadership. I don't want to have to worry that an unqualified VP, chosen for political expediency over the good of the nation, is a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

I'm not trying to reach independents or republicans. I'm not trying to reach women who still feel bruised that Hillary is not the nominee.

My goal is to reach as many Democrats as possible to get the message out that McCain/Palin is a disaster for our values and our democracy and they must not stay home in November.

Voter turnout among Democrats in the swing states could decide the election. It's really whether there are more of them or more of us. They are now energized, due to Palin.

If you are pro-choice, pro-stem cell research, want universal health care and to preserve your social security benefits, want your child to be able to afford college, don't want your child to be at risk of having to go to some foreign land and die in an ill-advised war, if you care about new jobs and the housing crisis, about the high cost of gas and groceries, about the preservation of your constitutional rights, about reducing our over-reliance on incarceration for non-violent crimes, and have any sense of environmentalism, you can't stay home. And you should be spreading the message.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 11, 2008 (boomark / email).