McCain's campaign has been one bitch-slap after another: lies, sarcasm, and ridicule.
Obama replies, "I don't care what they way about me."
In the face of this, we wring our hands about what we can do to support Obama, and offer suggestions on how he can defend himself better.
This couldn't possibly be more perverse.
McCain's ridicule is not targeted at Obama. It's targeted at us, his supporters.
It's done to impugn our honor. It's done to make us look like idiots.
And that is exactly what it's doing.
The point is to humiliate us, and then to show that Obama can't - or won't - do anything about it.
The goal is simple: to show everyone that to support Obama is to risk ridicule; humiliation; dishonor.
To show that Obama does not deserve any loyalty or commitment, because he does not return that loyalty or commitment to his supporters. Instead, he will stand by, doing nothing, as they (we) get bitch-slapped again and again.
Obama's response of "I don't care what they say about me" is totally beside the point. It's not about him, it's about us, and he damn well better start caring what they say about us, or not many people are going to be willing to join us.
It is sick that our response to this is to wonder how we can support Obama better, and to offer our clever suggestions to him. Personally, I'm finished with it. I really don't give a damn how he does it. It's not my job to figure it out, nor is it yours.
It's his job to figure out how to make it possible to support him - to become invest some ego with him - without getting stigmatized.
I'm not inclined to lift a finger for him until he does, nor should we expect anyone else to be so inclined: on current trends, this just risks deeper humiliation.
He is, after all, in a much better position to defend us than we are to defend him. If he can't figure out how, or simply refuses to, then he's going to go down in history as a mockery, a laughingstock. And he'll find that a pretty small percentage of the electorate is willing to join him.
UPDATE 1: It looks like I need to make my point more plainly. A voter's commitment to a candidate involves a personal identification with the candidate. Sometimes this point is spoken of in terms of whether voters "relate to the candidate." Put another way, it entails an ego-investment with the candidate. This, in turn, brings up these issues of humiliation and personal dignity.
I had thought this point was widely understood. We all know that if elections were simply a matter of the issues, Obama (and Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, and Mondale - who I volunteered for at age 17 - before him) would be elected easily.
In my view, for Obama to say "I don't care what they say about me" doesn't take full measure of the power of this dynamic. I doubt that "confronting" this by affecting a lack of concern about it, calling it a distraction from the issues (however forcefully), and then just continuing to plug away at the issues as before, will be effective, given that this was the strategy of all the nominees I named above.
Obama said:
I don't care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift-boat politics. Enough is enough."
Obama's use of this "I'm not going to let them..." phrasing is especially bad news, because there's no better way of letting your opponent get away with something than insisting that you're not going to let them get away with it.
As I say, unlike everyone else, I have no suggestions for Obama about how to address this - that's his job. Except to say that right now he's not addressing it.
UPDATE 2: It looks like writing a diary pointing this problem out is a good way to get commenters to think you're an asshole.