In successive events this morning at the National Press Club, which I watched on C-SPAN 2, the McCain camp rolled out the same tired, bogus accusations about ACORN, and then... ACORNactually spoke for itself! And damn, they did a great job.
It has seemed to many of us that ACORN has taken a lot of these nasty hits without really hitting back, but that is clearly last week's news. On top of their hilarious press release yesterday noting McCain's attendance at an ACORN-sponsored pro-immigration rally in 2006, today's press conference was a model of how to fight back against smears. It appears they have taken a page out of the Obama campaign book.
Here were some of the highlights:
I. Rev. Gloria Sweiringa (sp?), identified as the President of Maryland ACORN, came out guns a-blazing. It appears that although the lord did not bless her with sight, he did bless her with wit, wisdom, and the wherewithal to tear apart phony GOP arguments about voter fraud. "The franchise was bought with blood," said the good Reverend while tearing apart the silly McCain/Palin diversion tactics. I want to go to her church!
II. Miles Rapoport, the president of Demos and former Secretary of State of CT, did a phenomenal job of batting away silly arguments and pointing out the logic behind the law requiring all registration cards, even phony ones, be turned in to the state. Obviously, if ACORN were trying to "steal" the election for Obama, they would refuse to turn in Republican cards and claim those to be the phony ones, Rapoport pointed out. It's clear that ACORN turning in the bad cards (albeit separately marked and coded as problematic) is terrible for their PR, as we've seen in recent weeks, but the right thing to do for democracy. NOT turning in those cards would cause even louder howls from the GOP.
III. Enrique Peralta spoke as a brand new voter, who had just won his citizenship and will be voting for the first time in a few weeks. "I don't understand why people would keep me off the rolls. They don't know which way I will vote, I've never voted before," he said. "Having worked so hard to became an American, I understand more than many exactly what it means to be an American, and all of us have the right and responsibility to vote." Damn straight. When the right-wing media tried to concern troll him with voter fraud nonsense, he stood up to them, and even as he struggled with his English, his commitment to democracy shone through beautifully. This is where I almost shed a tear.
IV. Kevin Whelan, the ACORN spokesman, swatted away stupid argument after stupid argument that the media raised, having just accepted them hook, line, and sinker from the McCain press conference right before hand. I have no idea why Whelan hasn't been all over the cable nets doing the same as he did today, but will somebody please book this guy? Rachel, Keith?
V. Steve Kest, the Executive Director of ACORN, was incredibly gracious to both dolts Rudman and Danforth, and noted that while ACORN was locked out of the McCain press conference, both men were invited to participate in ACORN's. He further noted that ACORN has reached out to both senators to ask for a meeting to explain the truth about the voter registration drives, and that he expected that such a meeting would be productive and provide them with a better perspective. My guess is that both are too controlled by the McCain handlers for the next three weeks, but that they'll end up apologizing after the election.
Well, I didn't cover all of it, but these are my freshest memories of the events. I don't really understand the C-SPAN website too well, and I can't get it to work for me, but I think you can access the ACORN press conference and the McCain ones at the following links (which I'm not being allowed to hyper-text):
rtsp://video1.c-span.org/archive/c08/c08_101408_acorn.rm
rtsp://video1.c-span.org/archive/c08/c08_101408_fraud.rm
See them for yourself and see what you think. My take away? ACORNis finally punching back, and they landed a knockout blow today.