Obama Launches Portal to Expose GOP Attacks

There's a new meme in the presidential race: The Internet is helping expose dirty tricks, enhance campaign accountability and punish the purveyors of dog whistle sleaze. Web luminaries from Arianna Huffington to Micah Sifry pushed that argument this week. The Obama campaign agrees.

On Friday, Obama's new media office launched an initiative to identify and expose any last-minute, below-the-radar attacks on the Democratic nominee. A web portal, Radar.BarackObama.com, tracks attacks, anonymous robocalls and solicits reports from supporters around the country, "anchor[ing]" an "expansive campaign to push back on McCain's unceasing negativity," according to a campaign aide. (The campaign is also touting offline pushback in key states, pointing to recent events in Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia.)

Of course, Obama's aides have been countering attacks for the whole campaign, online and off, including another open-source portal, FightTheSmears.com. Radar is distinct, however, because it maps and measures Republican attacks, showing the public (and the press) exactly how much Republicans are relying on robocalls, mailers and attacks in the homestretch. The site aims to expose every "toxic attack" designed "to quietly poison voters' information with lies and fear tactics." A U.S. map provides an indictment of Sen. John McCain, the site contends, by displaying attacks "which are approved by the McCain campaign or its Republican partners" (emphasis in original). The map:

As it happens, TalkingPointsMemo, a site that has fused journalism and new media activism, unveiled a similar map this week, titled "Flying Under The Radar: The Map of GOP Sleaze."

In the new era of web-driven politics, nothing stays below the radar for long, which can pose a bigger problem for hypocritical and deceitful candidates. For months, McCain proudly lectured voters about how he runs honest, honorable campaigns. Yet new media scrutiny has exposed his use of the same lies, smears and tricks that helped sour the nation on the Republican politics of Rove. For some voters, the revulsion with McCain's last-minute smears may be especially acute, once they know that he is employing the very operatives who launched hateful, racist smears and lies about his family in 2000. That is not only hypocritically dishonorable, by definition; it also smacks of an unseemly desperation.

Comments

[XME]

I'm very hopeful that Obama not only wins on November 4th, but that he wins big and that he wins several states that are traditionally Republican. I want this primarily two reasons:

1. With all of the GOP accussations of voter fraud, etc., I want there to be NO mistake that John McCain lost and lost so big that there's no doubt he lost "fair and square".

2. I would love for this election to send a message loud and clear to the GOP and dirty politics, fear campaigns, and divisiveness doesn't work and that we just won't accept their garbage anymore.

[tilted windmill]

The correct link for the website is http://radar.barackobama.com/ It has no "www."

[demfriend]

It is amazing the amount of money Obama has raised in this election and I appreciate the most the ability he has had to make the very things we know to be threats to our hope of changes open and a must see to show McCain as he is. I also hope this time McCain will have to pay a price for the way he has done his campaign. The ease he has had getting away with stuff is like on Letterman when it was done no more problem even thought Letterman held him to the fire for a few questions McCain came out no big deal, Sure he lied and we saw proof by that is over and done so NEXT! But McCain and his camp with Palin have doe real damages to us with the hate, the lies, the misrepresentations and the racism. He is as bad a Wallace was times two or three as at least Wallace could use the times and the feelins tied to many years of open racism. McCain has dragged it out of a deep dark hole and happily used it againest Obama when we are trying to survive some of the worst economic times in recent past.

[kenmattos]

I tried the article's link and then that by MadOzbo. Neither work for me. Maybe the site is having problems?

[MadOzbo]

The hotlink in the article is bad.

it is: http://www.radar.barackobama.com