WHITHER OBAMA?

As seems reasonable let us suppose that Obama will be the candidate for President, then what he will face from influential sections of the US media is not a snowstorm from which he will emerge like something in the washing powder adds. Far from it. The proud accomplishment of the agency at work here is have had elected the worst, least qualified president in American history. Bush has the poll ratings to show for it. Iraq will be his legacy, a legacy of indolence and iniquity.

Obama is a smart person, so the odds are he is well aware of what is in store for him. There is a possibility that he can turn the puerile attacks that lie in wait to his advantage. Perhaps Rudd illustrates that this can be done, although the attack against Obama will be more vicious and better resourced than those against Rudd.

Glenn Greenwald has the low down:

Most importantly of all, the guardians of our political discourse — the Chris Matthews and Howie Kurtzs and Mark Halperins and The Politicos, all of whom dwell in Matt Drudge’s kingdom — traffic almost exclusively in puerile, vapid fixations with these types of petty conflicts and substance-free controversies. They’re the decadent ringleaders of the freak show which dominates our political discourse and dictates the outcome of our elections.

Just this morning alone, Howie Kurtz’s entire column is filled with quoting the likes of The Weekly Standard, Captain Ed, Kathryn Jean Lopez and David Brooks in order mindlessly to re-circulate every slimy, small-minded attack from this week on Obama. None of them is going to change in the slightest, because slothful, empty, small-minded chatter, driven by their Matt Drudge overlords, is all they are told to do, all they’re capable of doing, and all they want to do. No matter who the nominees are, the behavior of our media stars won’t change, because it can’t.

Nor, contrary to what appears to be the unduly optimistic belief of some Obama supporters, will the sleazy right-wing noise machine change its tactics in the slightest. Immediately before I read Lisa Schiffren’s “half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby” rant, I watched Mike Gallagher on Fox News explain, to a sympathetic host, that Sharon Stone ought to be “charged with treason” for pointing out that insufficient attention is paid to the death of Iraqi civilians.

It’s vitally important to remember that our political life is suffuse with lowlifes and hatemongers like this. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter — the heart and soul of the right-wing — aren’t going anywhere, nor are the media-connected, Swiftboat-spewing operatives who function in the shadows and the sewers. As Digby pointed out yesterday, the Right has already created a new, extremely well-funded organization — overseen by the incomparably slimy and truth-free Ari Fleischer — preparing to unleash exactly this sort of bile. As Digby said, the Democratic primary is exceedingly polite when compared to what is coming: “Just wait until you see what Ari Fleischer and his quarter of a billion have in store for us.”

So the question isn’t whether Obama will be relentlessly pelted by the sprawling appendages of the Right-wing edifice and its media allies with the most grotesque, bottom-feeding, substance-free, personality-based attacks. Of course he will be — ones as ugly as, if not uglier than, anything we’ve seen yet.

I suspect that the American public, with the evidence before their eyes, will say in the words of Margaret Thatcher, “Enough is enough” or as they say in certain quarters of New York, “Enough already”. We shall see.

ELSEWHERE:

Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, via Truthdig, describes what has gone wrong with the Clinton campaign, without sufficient emphasis on Obama’s background in community action programs.