22 days to go, Republican campaign gets dirty

• States that have previously voted Republican are turning Democrat

The world has elected Barack Obama president of the United States. It is now waiting to see if the Americans will reject him on November 4.

So far that appears a long shot because Obama now has a double digit lead in opinion polls and, more importantly, states which have previously voted, and are known to be Republican or red, are turning Democrat and blue.

Indeed, personally I am still trying to figure out why, with a depressed economy, an unpopular Iraqi war, a terribly unpopular Republican in the White House, and a grumpy old rival, Obama has not closed this poll deal already.

A struggling Republican campaign has gone negative and dirty and could up the ante further as there are only 22 days to go.

Consider the following scenarios.

In the 1960s, during the protests against the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War, a certain American named William Ayers was a member of a group that called itself Weather Underground. This group carried out harmless bomb attacks against the American government and had, in its sights, such landmarks as the Pentagon.

Forty years later, Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Obama’s home state of the same name.

Now Prof Ayers hosted a tea or dinner or whatever for Obama when he made his debut in politics in 1995.

When Ayers was an active activist in the 60s, Obama was eight years old. But now the struggling Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin ticket is alleging that Obama has an association with terrorists.

Palin is saying that Obama is hiding something from the American people and that he considers the US an imperfect country which is why he is palling with terrorists.

The attempt to tag Obama as a violent man is not confined to the US.

Last week, American right wing journalist and author Dr Jerome Corsi was set to launch his book Obama Nation here in Kenya. Notice that the name Obama Nation is a clever play on the word abomination.

Note that Corsi was here to tell Kenyans and the world about findings of an investigation into the role of Obama in the election violence that engulfed Kenya early this year.

Corsi, who writes that the elder Obama killed himself out of drink driving and portrays him as what Americans would call the marrying type or one who has been married many times, is linking Obama and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to the violence.

And, he regards Raila as a communist, therefore suggesting that Obama, too, is a communist.