One of the stranger features of the recent presidential debate was the complete absence of William Ayers. If the attempt to link Obama to Ayers were the last, best hope for the McCain campaign that it was advertised as, one would think McCain would have mentioned it in front of the largest TV audience he will get. Perhaps he decided, for the reasons I outlined earlier, that it was too risky to go negative in person, and better to delegate the task to attack dogs like Sarah Palin - although even she has reportedly not mentioned Ayers recently. But treating Obama as just another Democratic politician to be debated on tax and healthcare does undermine the insinuation that he is a dangerous radical sympathetic to terrorism. Picking up on this, Obama yesterday challenged his opponent to "say it to my face". That might be a mistake. But it does drive home the point that McCain evidently does not believe the story his own campaign is spinning.
Some people who have accepted that story, however, are the grassroots Republicans in the video Kanishk posted below. This underscores the danger of whipping up anger with dishonest attacks. Whoever wins in November, they will be disliked and distrusted by a significant segment of the American population, and that is not a good thing for the country.