This election’s smear campaigns are precision strikes flying under the radar, unlike the publicity assault from the Swift Boat attacks last time around, the New York Times reports. An independent group has run cable ads heavy on racial overtones in Detroit’s suburbs, linking Barack Obama to controversial black figures such as his former pastor, Detroit’s disgraced mayor and, in a coming ad, Kenya’s prime minister.
The chairman of the local Democratic Party where the ads are running dismisses the campaign as “race oriented,” but the director of the group behind the spots said race had “zero” role in them. Throughout the campaign, there have been a number of efforts to define Obama as foreign through false information in fliers and chain emails.
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