After days of John McCain, Sarah Palin, and even Cindy McCain whipping their supporters into a hate-filled frenzy, after listening to audience members at town halls call Sen. Obama vile names and threaten violence, and after the McCain camp attempted to defend their supporters' vitriol and blame Sen. Obama for calling them on it, John McCain finally cautioned his followers to stop the venomous attacks.

They booed him.

Apparently, the hate and division that's been driving the McCain camp is stronger than McCain's ability to lead, and the fact that people turned on him at the suggestion Sen. Obama is actually a good person is an indication of the deep indoctrination of hate from the far right. Of course, the recent escalation of character assassination from the McCain campaign is nothing new, it's been promoted by right wing radio, television and newspapers since the start of the campaign, But the racist and partisan rage reached a crescendo over the past week.

So, McCain finally made an attempt to reign in the ugliest of the smears against Sen. Obama, a start if he ever hopes to recover any credibility and save his legacy. The ads are still running, though. And his running mate hasn't shown any signs of dialing down the rhetoric. The campaign insists on continuing to divide America further by pointing to Obama's rather tenuous associations while ignoring their own close ties to a host of criminals, radicals, and secessionist sympathizers like Carl Lindner, G. Gordon Liddy, Charles Keating, Phil Gramm, Todd Palin, David Ifshin, John Hagee, George Wallace, Jr., John Rakolta, Robert Liggett, Oliver North, and The U.S. Council for World Freedom. I wonder if McCain's supporters know about this stuff and choose to ignore it, or if they just don't know that their guy's history of associations with questionable characters goes a lot deeper than being on a couple charity boards with a former radical and current university professor with ties to Reagan appointee Leonore Annenberg.

Sen. Kerry sent an e-mail to his supporters yesterday, calling on us to report attacks at Truth Fights Back and stop the spread of fear and smear promoted by the McCain camp.

Hello KV,

John McCain has shown a stunning failure of leadership. His campaign, in a time of economic crisis and foreign policy drift, has degenerated into a negative and nasty campaign of smears.

The reports are piling up of ugliness at the campaign rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Audience members hurl insults and racial epithets, call out "Kill Him!" and "Off With His Head," and yell "treason" when Senator Obama's name is mentioned. I strongly condemn language like this which can only be described as hate-filled.

According to reports, every ad paid for by the John McCain campaign is now a negative ad - every single one! McCain allows his running mate to make outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office.

We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. We need to fight back, spread the word about what kind of low campaign he's running, and make sure people know the truth.

We set up an action center at TruthFightsBack.com, where you can print out a flier to be posted anywhere and write an letter to your local media to spread the word about the negative and destructive McCain-Palin campaign. Follow this link:

http://www.truthfightsback.com/mccainsmears

And we want to expand our Google ad campaign. When people hear a charge, many of them search for more information. We need to make sure they see the truth by placing it at the top of their searches. So please give what you can so we can reach as many people as possible.

http://www.truthfightsback.com/contribute

We follow the search patterns of people closely and try to jump on the new charges and smears right away. But to get to all of them, we need your help!

Make no mistake, these are desperation tactics from the McCain-Palin campaign. They know that they are in trouble, that the American people are tired of the Republican policies that got us into this mess. But desperation does not excuse the kind of campaign they are now running. We all need to stand up and demand better.

And work to defeat them in November.

Thank you,
John Kerry