Dreams From My Real Father: Anti-Obama DVD Mailed To Voters Could Be Backfiring On GOP

Dreams From My Real Father, and anti-Obama film being mailed to voters in swing states with the intention of turning them against the president, may instead be having the opposite effect.

The movie, which comes from director Joel Gilbert, is being mailed to voters in swing state by the millions, Slate reported. The movie claims that Barack Obama was actually fathered by Communist poet Frank Marshall Davis, part of a normally quiet messaging campaign to paint Obama as a foreign “other” to voters.

This whisper campaign was seen prominently in 2008, with an email claiming Obama was secretly a Muslim, a message that mixed made-up details about Obama with facts about Keith Ellison, an actual Muslim in Congress.

Gilbert’s approach isn’t so much to whisper as to shout. The DVD being mailed to voters makes some outrageous claims, going so far as to point out facial similarities between Obama and Marshall.

The message isn’t going over so well with voters, noted polling expert Frank Luntz found. A group of conservative donors asked Luntz to screen three anti-Obama films — the tamer The Hope and the Change tested well — and they found voters hated it.

As The New York Times reported:

Focus groups were revolted by “Dreams From My Real Father,” with its conspiracy theory paranoia and dubious evidence. It compares photos of the president and Mr. Davis, noting that they have similar noses and freckles. It also purports to have uncovered nude photos of Mr. Obama’s mother in a bondage magazine.

David Weigel of Slate also asked voters what they thought of Dreams From My Real Father, and also found disgust for the film.

“I live in Denver, am a white, relatively liberal, registered independent and I got Dreams from my Real Father in the mail,” says Dan Bush, a Democrat in Denver. “I didn’t open it because I think the whole birther thing is racist trash.”