What’s with this disturbing trend I’ve been noticing lately?
I’m voting Obama and am looking forward to his term.
However, I know a lot of people voting McCain and now with defeat coming into the picture they seem to be set on the notion that once Obama is in office it’s only a matter of time before he’s assasinated.:eek:
None of them are saying they wish it to happen or want it to happen they just genuinely believe someone with extreme prejudice is going to do it.
This runs from my FIL in Chicago, a co-worker in MN, and most recently my sister from Milwaukee. They’ve all made the same comment without prompting.
Where is this originating from? Is this from right-wing doomsday prophets on the radio?
I know there is a lot of extremist hate on both sides of the political spectrum with harsh words to be had but I’ve never seen it go as far as thinking something as drastic as an assasination is inevitable.
For my part it’s because I remember the upwelling of right-wing hatred for Clinton and he was a good ol boy white man. The right-wing hate machine will continue spewing its lies, continue spreading its vitriol and then act all surprised when someone tries to shoot Obama, the ‘Muslim, terrorist, liberal, godless traitor’.
I believe it is a cast iron certainty that he will have a serious attempt on his life. I seriously doubt he’ll get to the end of his first term breathing. Any one can be killed if the killer doesn’t care about getting caught or killed.
Sorta depends on how you define attempt, but lets say that we’ll count any case where shots were actually fired (or in Clintons case, where a plane actually hit the WH).
Ford, Reagan, Bush II (a grenade, not a gun in this case) and Clinton that I know of, anyways. There was a supposed attempt on Bush I by Iraqis at one point, but I don’t think that ever got very far.
I’m surprised if this is mainly a right-wing worry. I’m an Obama supporter, and I (and my Obama lovin’ wife) am really scared that like this might happen.
I haven’t heard any one express such a concern except here. Every president is at risk, maybe Obama slightly more so although I would think GWB has had to be at great risk too since he’s the most disliked president we’ve had since Hoover.
I think the Secret Service is up to its job. This is not something that will keep me awake at night.
This is exactly what I was going to say. The fact that Bush can incite the the kind of hatred he has over the last eight years and survive makes me feel better about Obama’s safety.
For me, it comes mainly from hearing someone shouting “terrorist!” or “Shoot him!” at a rally in reference to Obama, and the GOP VP candidate doing nothing in response but to go on with her litany of innuendo and misinformation. Then of course, there’s the stories of those white supremacists who actually were planning on assassinating Obama. It was pretty clear that both “rings” posed no actual threat, but it’s real and it’s scary.
I’m an Obama fan very worried about assasination. I think the McCain campaign has been playing with fire, by trying to come as close as possible to inciting extreme fear and hatred without actually doing it. Peripherally to the campaign have been various people spreading rumors that Obama is Muslim or foreign born or associated with terrorists or even socialist. A recent poll in Texas found that 23% of people believed he was Muslim. The campaign has had people doing introductions at the mike using the middle name Hussain, and chants of “Yes McCain, No Hussein”. I don’t think McCain or any of the principles associated with him want to see an assasination, but I do think they are exercising very poor restraint and judgement in more or less encouraging this kind of thing to happen.
On the plus side, no doubt the Secret Service is very aware of how important their job is these days.
I haven’t heard people worrying about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find it true that a lot of attempts would be made. However, AFAIK people try to kill the president all the time and they just don’t usually get very far. The Secret Service is pretty good at the job. So I’ll just hope they do well at it.
I think part of it is people feel it’s how the story has to end. They see Barack Obama as somebody like one of the Kennedys or Martin Luther King or Gandhi - too good to live so he’ll have an untimely and tragic death.
Personally, if Obama is the target of an assassination attempt, I think it’s more likely to come from one of his followers than from some white supremist. It’s that thin line between love and hate.
For the “right”, this election has been about smears, lies, hate, name-calling, and cries of “kill him”, 'terrorist". I"m not sure that many McCain supporters even know what McCain stands for other than “hate the other guy”. Does anyone think that they can get the hate back into a box now that McCain and his people have let it out and stoked it? They’ve accepted the hate, promoted it, and even encouraged it.
The republicans don’t exactly have a history of “lets pull together and support the democratic president”.
Perhaps on Nov 6 they should appoint a special prosecutor, whose sole job it will be to follow Obama around 24/7, digging for anything he does wrong, even throwing a gum wrapper on the ground.
Except the people who intensely dislike Bush are sane.
I’m not too worried about Obama being assassinated, but they do need to be extra-vigilant, because the set of folks who hate him and the set of folks who are batshit insane overlap to a great degree.
If you look at the sort of people who have shot a president, it’s not like they have some specific axe to grind about that particular person. They’re just attention-seeking nutcases. Lee Oswald just wanted to go down in history, and probably would have shot whoever was in that motorcade. John Hinckley did it out of his obsession with Jodie Foster rather than any issue he had with Ronald Reagan.
It’s from the same source as the left-wing gloom and doomers wrt Bush et al and the current administration. Politics in the US has gotten VERY nasty, and neither side has a lock on the depths such nastiness can go.
While I think that threatening (or even conjecture) about whacking ANY US president is ‘disturbing’, I think this is a case of gored oxes. People are more sensitive to threats from the lunatic fringe concerning Obama because they are more concerned about Obama…while against, say, GW, it’s more a ‘meh’ response because frankly people don’t care that much for him. But think back to all the over the top attacks on GW…and then you’ll have some idea why the other side is gearing up the hate for what looks to be a certain slam dunk victory for Obama tomorrow.
Seems a no brainer to me. That said, I don’t think Obama is really in more immediate danger than GW (or most other presidents) are…and I have every faith that the Secret Service is up to keeping the whack jobs and nut cases at bay.
That’s exactly why GWB wasn’t at a particularly high risk. As a rule, assassination victims tend to be extremely popular. You don’t think JFK’s shooting was because of his low approval ratings, do you?
Which is, of course, small condolence in Obama’s case. I’m certain there’ll be attempts on his life; I just hope that the Secret Service is able to do their job.
Yeah, but there was never any serious menace from Bush-haters except maybe a risk of a sit-in or somebody mailing patchouli-drenched letters to the White House. Obama-haters, OTOH, include those who are actual neonazi paramilitary groups that have been equipping and training themselves for armed resistance in the event that blacks and Jews will eventually take over America. It seems to me that an Obama presidency would be a put-up-or-shut-up event for those guys. I could easily see them mustering 50-100 armed attackers for a brute-force assault at a public appearance, taking out not only Obama but as many bystanders as they could.
Nothing like that has ever happened before, of course, but then again nothing like September 11th had ever happened in 2001, and we’ve never had even a fractionally black president before. I’m sure we all remember MLK though.
It’s not that they’re incapable, it’s that they’ve fallen out of the habit since the 1970s. Lately, all the violent whackos are RW. (And don’t give me any crap about eco-radical monkeywrenchers or a few smashed windows at the WTO convention; not the same league as Timothy McVeigh.)
