US election turns negative

As many pundits have predicted, the campaign has got personal as the two presidential candidates struggle to win support with their positions on the major issues

I think it was John McCain himself who said something along the lines that the general election campaign would five times dirtier than the battle for the Democrat nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Now it seems that his prophecy is coming true. The campaign was bound to get negative at some stage. They always do, despite promises by candidates that they want a good clean fight. The simple truth is that whilst voters say they don’t like negative campaigning, it appears to be effective.

Unfortunately race was inevitably going to be the issue around which the campign would pivot. And lo and behold, McCain has accused Obama of ‘playing the race card’ after the Democrat nominee appeared stung by the McCain camp’s accusations that he was too lightweight for the White House.

According to the New York Times:

‘“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, charged in a statement with which Mr. McCain later said he agreed. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

In leveling the charge, Mr. Davis was referring to comments that Mr. Obama made Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone and negative advertisements from the McCain campaign, including one that likens Mr. Obama’s celebrity status to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.’

This really will promise to be a defining issue for America. Will the closet racists prove decisive in failing to back Obama, or will America prove that the deep divisions that have scarred the nation’s history are no longer and that the nation is ready to move on?