All of which got me thinking about the general election. Sure, the Illinois senator is a long way from clinching the Democratic nomination. First he has to survive Ohio and Texas on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22--states that are rich in delegates and far more favorable to Clinton than February's Obama-friendly face-offs. Even then, the fight will probably go all the way to the convention in August (the math isn't rocket science). But if Obama does get the nod, I'm starting to wonder if he might find it tougher to peel off Republicans than his rhetoric (and the current polling) suggests--especially against John McCain. Reading through the comments on "He's One of Us Now," a story I wrote for this week's dead-tree magazine, I was reminded yesterday of a pesky little problem that could hurt him next November: the Muslim rumor.

Over the past few months, it's become clear that there are some shady people out there bent on spreading the claim----completely, inarguably, demonstrably false--that Obama is a "crypto-Muslim Manchurian candidate." It started with a set of untraceable viral emails, which say that "Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background" and ask "Can a good Muslim become a good American?" (the answer, they add, is no). And it has continued with trolls like "HolyRoller," a monomaniacal individual now infecting the "He's One of Us Now" comment board, where he's busy posing questions like "To all you Obama supporters: Is he Shiite or Sunni?" and lamenting "how foolish we have become" now that "a large segment of our population wants one of the [Islamic] devils to be their President"--despite the fact that my article had nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's religious background. The Obama campaign has been waging a determined, low-intensity war against the smear since January 2007, and the candidate himself has repeatedly weighed in. His typical response? "The American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for."

He's mostly right. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he'll have plenty of time before Election Day to tell voters that he's been "a member of the same church, the same Christian church, for almost 20 years"--enough, I'm sure, to reach all but the most willful bigots (who probably wouldn't vote for him anyway). But what if correcting the record isn't the problem? After a few months on the trail, I'm starting to worry that there are national-security swing voters out there who will be suspicious of someone who has ANY links to the Muslim world--as irrelevant as those links may be. I wish it wasn't true, but over the past two months, I've had at least a dozen people respond to my rote question--What do you think of Barack Obama?--by worrying aloud about his "Muslim background." I'm always quick to tell them that he's not a Muslim, but it rarely makes a difference. Take Vicki Hercsky, 47, a teacher from Boca Raton, Florida. "Obama, I don't even know how he got where he is," she told me after a Rudy Giuliani event late last month. "Why do you say that?" I asked. "He's Muslim," she replied, matter-of-factly. I stammered. "Well, um, his father was raised Muslim but was an agnostic by the time Barack was born," I said. "Obama is a Christian." Hercsky wasn't swayed. "Yeah, but he has it in his blood," she said. "You can't take away what's given to you. It's given to you for a reason, and that's who you are. That's who he is." I'm not sure what she meant by "it," or "who he is"--and I'm not sure I want to know.

In a general election battle, the macho, militaristic McCain would make a mighty effort to focus voters' attention on national security. He'd contrast his experience--"I've been involved in every major national security issue for the last 20 years, and in some ways the last 40," he's fond of saying--with Obama's rather light foreign policy resume. And he'd deploy the phrase "radical Islamic extremism" whenever possible. In that kind of contest, Obama doesn't want moderate Republicans--voters he hopes to add to his "coalition for change"--wondering whether he's "an Islamic sympathizer," in HolyRoller's ignorant formulation, or even listening to Rush Limbaugh repeat "Hussein" (the senator's middle name) over and over again. It's not like national-security voters need to believe that Obama is a practicing Muslim; they just need to suspect that he's not as strongly "anti-Muslim" as McCain. I've seen how easy it is to sow those seeds of doubt--and how tenaciously they blossom. To decide solely on such irrelevant innuendo would be stupid. But people do stupid things when they're scared, and after hearing what I've heard on the trail, I'm not so sure that some of them wouldn't decide that way regardless.

*Changed from "Obama's Pesky 'Muslim' Problem," which was, as several commenters have pointed out, a misleading headline. I should've thought longer and harder about the title instead of posting the first thing that came to mind. Apologies to all.

**Knew I was forgetting something. Thanks to commenter Renata29 for pointing out my omission.

UPDATE, 5:15 p.m.: Two things in response to the commenters:

1) I'm not working off of Clinton talking points; I'm working off of my own experience and reporting on the campaign trail, where I've spoken to dozens of voters over the past few months--and where a surprising number, as I note in the article, brought up what they called Obama's "Muslim background" as a source of concern. There's a big difference between speculating about "hypothetical Republican attacks"--which you'll notice I never do--and reporting on conversations you've had with actual Americans whose views of the race seem to have been colored by these false, bigoted whispers. The problem exists, and ignoring it won't make it go away.

2) Kenny F writes, "It's not innuendo, it's bigotry.  Americans are queasy now about openly saying that they won't vote for a black candidate, so this becames a handy stand-in ("It's in his blood??" Yuck).  Also, you forget that there is nothing wrong with a Muslim candidate, just like there is nothing wrong with an Evangelical one." He's absolutely right--and trust me, I didn't forget. But if it weren't clear from the article, let me make it clear now--there's nothing wrong with a Muslim candidate. The problem is, a lot of Americans (sadly) disagree--and as long as they think Obama's father's Muslim childhood somehow makes the Illinois senator suspect--or even just less "anti-Jihadi" than McCain--he may have a problem.