Digby coins a new term, in response to this piece:

The main obstacle standing between Barack Obama and the White House was distilled into five words by a local television correspondent in South Charleston, W.Va., earlier this month.

Prefacing a question about the challenges of winning over white, blue-collar voters, the reporter offered this observation: “They think you are un-American,” he said.

Such questions, asked by reporters and plainly on the minds of voters in Appalachia and elsewhere, are the fruits of an unprecedented, subterranean e-mail campaign.

What began as a demonstrably false attempt to cast Obama as a Muslim has now metastasized into something far more threatening to the likely Democratic nominee. The spurious claims about his faith have spiraled into a broader assault that questions his patriotism and citizenship and generally portrays him as a threat to mainstream, white America.

You know, I don’t think this idiocy threatens Obama’s campaign as much as it threatens the well-being of the nation itself.

Putting Obama as the candidate aside - here’s a means in which demonstrably false information (or information that could be demonstrated to be false, if the recipients/senders had any interest in verifiying it at all) could sway an election. Lies; here’s where the racist/xenophobic desire to believe outright lies about Teh Dreaded Other carries weight.

Thomas Jefferson talked a lot about the need for an educated citizenry. But here we see a willful ignorance - and not only that; an resentment at any suggestion that this ignorance isn’t valid.

But it isn’t, and it shall be marginalized. Americans have let themselved be led around by their predjudices these past seven-plus years. It’s gotten us into Big Trouble. And will continue to do so, should we keep marching blindly down that path.