So the Obamattacks are taking two forms lately.
The first one is the healthcare one, for which I have no opinion. I am wary of both sides on the debate, and I have little knowledge of the macroeconomics and the current system. All I know is the the current system is broken, and the proposed solution is a rather radical replacement. It will undoubtedly not be without its flaws, but radical deviations are naturally more appealing than modification and patchwork, so it's no surprise it has momentum.
The second attack one is another one of those crude, coarse, ad hominem ones. The ObamaBirth. Like the ObamaIslam Obamattack, this one is all about the personal details: Obama's birthplace is disputed; He has not presented a convincing argument for being born in the United States; It is against the Constitution for a foreign-born to be the President.
Most people find the attack absurd enough, as it has nothing to do with Barack al-quiad Obama's last forty-plus years of life and achievement. That's been commented on by plenty, but the thing is that there's a sizable portion of the American population that's doubly offended by the debacle.
Now for the record, I'm not an American. I'm currently here on a visa to study and work, and while I aspire to be an American citizen one day, I have no political rights in dis here joint. Whether or not this issue offends me is understandably not any American's concern. That is fine.
But for every possibly-American-in-the-future like myself, there's thousands of foreign-born, first-generation Americans with full citizenship and voting rights. For each of these, there is a family of second-generation Americans. And all of them are being told by the news, straight into their faces, that the President may be one of them, and how shameful that is. How dangerous. How evil.
Most foreign-borns that have been through the U.S constitution had already known that there is an explicit term regarding their kind and presidency, and that term is virtually the only legal difference between themselves and US-born Americans. It's a bitter issue, and one can make an argument that the distinction is deprecated and archaic, but practically it is not something that comes up often (it was lightly discussed whenever there is talk for a future Arnold Schwarzenegger presidency, but nothing has come out of it, especially in todays particularly xenophobic America). On top of this, Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, and that would be a hard campaign that few people would bother with right now.
But when you constantly imply that these people are marked with this singular limitation, this handicap of theirs, this inferior stature? Sure, they may not be able to change it.
But they are still very capable of voting. And they will vote against you.