From The Asia Times
By Pepe Escobar

How mud-wallowingly deep may a multi-millionaire US presidential campaign go? Way deep - deeper and deeper. And this is only early August.

Republican Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign’s strategic decision is now all too obvious. Swift-boating Democratic Senator Barack Obama is the only way to go.

The McCain-painted Obama is emerging as a US-hating, terrorist-friendly, deeply suspicious, radical, vapid black celeb - Puff Daddy with a Harvard degree. This “new bogeyman” picture travels well in those vast swathes of flyover US territory where urban hipness not only evokes envy and contempt but is regarded as a mortal sin.

The McCain campaign knows that is the only chance in heaven and hell for their candidate in November. What can a strategist do when US voters desperately want change and reject the Republican brand in droves, your candidate is senile and insufferably boring, knows absolutely zilch about the economy, and supports a mega-unpopular war?

So abandon all hope those who yearn for a serious political debate in the US. And it gets worse: signs are the McCain campaign “strategy” is working.

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