Conventional wisdom suggests that President Obama's decision to finally release his long-form birth certificate might put the "birther" issue to rest. Of course, conventional wisdom is seriously wrong in this case. There is no way Obama's latest capitulation will change the birthers' minds about him or lead them to stop their efforts to delegitimize his presidency. So did releasing this certificate accomplish anything of value for the president and his supporters?

If Obama would just release his birth certificate, this would all go away? If he's got nothing to hide, why won't he release his birth certificate?

We're all familiar with the birther refrain. Our corporate owned media has made sure of that. But can anybody actually believe that the whole thing will go away now that Obama has release the certificate?

The best case scenario seems to be that the Obama administration can claim that they called the birthers' bluff by releasing the certificate. They can argue that continued birtherism proves that the issue was never really about Obama's citizenship. They have a point - at least they would have if the full certificate had been release when it was first requested. It is too late now. The conspiracy theory has already been established.

The worst case scenario is that the birthers claim victory (as Trump has already done) and move effortlessly to the next issue. This is precisely what Trump has done by now requesting Obama's school records while making it clear that he doubts the authenticity of the long-form birth certificate as well.

I suspect that most reasonable Americans have already decided that there is not much merit to the birther claims. But I'm not sure that really matters now. Even a bad lie, when repeated enough, can do damage. As long as corporate profits would be higher without Obama in office, we are going to keep hearing about the birthers.

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