What Did He Do to be So Black and Blue? Obama and the Race Card

This year should be a perfect storm for a Democratic presidential candidate, particularly one with the rhetorical gifts of Barack Obama. McCain has literally every indicator political scientists enter into their models to predict electoral success or defeat working against him: He has repeatedly allied himself with the most unpopular president since the history of modern polling, describing Bush in 2006 as one of our greatest presidents and musing about having Dick Cheney in a McCain cabinet (two facts the Obama campaign has failed to advertise). He has embraced the most unpopular war since Vietnam. And in the summer before the election, the economy is arguably in its worst shape since the Great Depression, with American families spending a greater percentage of their income on basic necessities, home foreclosures at their zenith, and the ratio of job loss to job creation at its highest since the 1930s.

And those are just the beginning of McCain's problems. Every time he panders to the right he turns off moderates, and every time he takes a moderate position he reinforces the view on the right that he is not a "true conservative" and depresses voter turnout from his base And finally, whether the stress of tacking right and left so many times over the last two years has taken the wind out of his sails or whether he's just gotten too old and tired to take on the rigors of a presidential campaign, he has lost the sparkle that once drew many moderates and even many liberals to him, while running against the most charismatic leader to emerge on the political scene since Bill Clinton.

Yet now John McCain is tied with Obama in the Gallup polls, in a dead heat in the mid 40s for the third consecutive day.

McCain's Only Road to Victory

As I argued several weeks ago in The New Republic, with the winds so strongly blowing against him, the only road John McCain can take to Pennsylvania Avenue is one of the few pieces of infrastructure left in good repair by the Bush administration: the low road. And in the intervening weeks he has made precisely the staff changes in his campaign necessary to turn that road into a superhighway, by hiring a team of Rove acolytes, and has begun to implement exactly the strategies characteristic of a Rove campaign. And they are working.

1. Attack his opponent's great strength. For Kerry, it was his military heroism. For Obama, it is his charisma. This week McCain, with a strong assist from the media and an Obama campaign apparently on vacation, turned an extraordinary foreign success into Paris Hilton celebrity and an illustration of how Obama is arrogant, cocky, and too big for his britches, acting like a president when he's just a nominee. (The fact is, of course, that he did exactly what McCain did, but for Obama, people showed up.)

2. Identify a wedge issue. Now that gays have lost their luster and Republicans have started to worry that too much immigrant-bashing will lead to a permanent Democratic majority as the country becomes increasingly brown, Republicans found a perfect issue in an election year in which the Democratic presidential candidate is black: affirmative action. The GOP has gotten the issue on the ballot in a handful of states, including McCain's home state of Arizona, and McCain suddenly last weekend "saw the light" and changed his position, now supporting the initiative banning affirmative action in Arizona, having previously called such efforts divisive. No one called him on it as far as I know. Now today's New York Times reports that Obama wrote as a law student in the Harvard Law Review that he was a beneficiary of affirmative action.

3. Brand Obama as effete, out of touch, outside the mainstream, different, foreign, not one of "us." This is the same strategy used effectively against every Democrat other than Clinton since Dukakis.

The Ties that Bind, the Ties that Divide

Against the perfect storm of an unpopular incumbent, an unpopular war, and an economy that has led banks to close and millions to lose their jobs and homes, McCain's campaign is creating a perfect counter-storm. Each element described above draws power on its own from the worst in our nature--the prejudice, hate, contempt, and stereotyping that have become the bread and butter of Republican campaigns for four decades, intensified since the entry of Lee Atwater and then Karl Rove onto the national scene. But just beneath the surface of each of these elements--enough below to allow plausible deniability ("there's gambling in this establishment?")--is the tie that binds them: race.

Obama's extraordinary capacity to meet with world leaders on an equal footing wasn't presidential, the story goes, even though McCain goaded him into the trip, assuming he would look and be treated like a novice. Instead, his confidence, competence, and Kennedy-like star-power became an example of his not knowing his place. (Does the term "uppity" come to mind?)

The focus on affirmative action divides the nation along racial lines by combining prejudice with legitimate grievances about the way affirmative action was implemented over the years (e.g., through quotas) and by the disastrous tendency of many on the left to drive white working class men out of the Democratic Party since 1964 (the last time white men voted Democratic nationally) by referring to them universally as privileged, when their experience of punching a timecard or working in a coal mine or an assembly plant belies that epithet and rightfully enrages them. But affirmative action is a particularly powerful tool in this election year as a stealth attack, because it activates unconscious sentiments that will likely come to an occasional conscious boil: Is Obama an affirmative action candidate, who didn't really earn his place on the ticket but was just placed there by zealous liberals (an idea unfortunately voiced consciously in the primary season by Geraldine Ferraro, and no by the words penned by his own hand as a law student)? Is he going to favor black people as president, or as described "colorfully" in a message circulating on the Internet, "paint the White House black?"

And branding Obama as different, "unknown" (despite two years of intense scrutiny and two books that reveal his inner thoughts, some of them very personal--and hardly what a 33-year-old black man aspiring to the presidency would reveal), outside the mainstream, and "not sharing our values" keeps his blackness at a heightened state of unconscious activation in the mind and brain of the voter. The purpose of the Muslim smear that began nearly two years ago on the Internet, like the purpose of conservative commentators' constantly using his middle name and Fox's repeated confusions of "Obama" and "Osama," was surely never to convince voters that he was Muslim, which its purveyors had to know would eventually be exposed as untrue (although the Obama campaign's choice to read from the Democratic playbook and let insidious attacks fester for as long as possible rather than addressing them head on didn't help with the plurality of voters convinced by them by February or the 10 percent of the population who believe them to this day, even after watching the "endless loop" of clips of Reverend Wright).

The purpose of that smear was to lay the groundwork for making Obama "them" instead of "us" (with the added benefit of connecting the unconscious dots between black and Muslim, reminding an older generation of a different kind of Muslim terrorist threat from within). And it has succeeded, creating a large percentage of the population, including many traditionally Democratic voters, who voice sentiments such as "something about him just makes me uneasy," or "I don't feel like I really know him," that bind together these nagging doubts about him with unconscious negative attitudes toward African-Americans they may consciously eschew--and mean it. The data from psychology and neuroscience are clear that even people who are consciously opposed to discrimination--which is most Americans--may hold negative unconscious attitudes toward African-Americans, reflecting the images they see on television, personal encounters, or the residues of an era past in which the only role for blacks was in low-level service jobs, and that make the image of a black president difficult, if largely unconsciously, for older white voters.

The Architecture of a Stealth Campaign

Recent history--as recent as the midterm election of 2006, when Congressman Harold Ford went down to defeat in a race-baited campaign for Senate in Tennessee against a white candidate whose stump speech and advertising centered on the question, "Who's the real Tennessean?"--suggests that Democratic "politics as usual" (i.e., when something unpleasant comes up, avoid it and talk about Social Security and Medicare) does not disarm these kinds of stealth racial appeals. Nor do facts. We can expect conservative 527 groups to unleash a series of ads that use Obama's own words and voice from his extraordinary autobiography, Dreams from my Father, against him to drive home both his differentness and his blackness. Television listeners will hear passages describing the pilgrimage he made to Africa to solidify his identity as a young man, or the fact that his father was a polygamist (perhaps that will make Mitt Romney an acceptable running mate for McCain), or that his grandfather in Africa was a convert to Islam. This is the stuff of great superficial media coverage, as each new ad unfolds, drawing endless discussions from pundits about how it will affect the average white American.

It is in this context that the McCain campaign made its impressive tactical strike this week, accusing Obama of "playing the race card" when he began inoculating voters against the racially tinged attacks that have been coming his way for two years and that right-wing media consultants have already telegraphed will be coming in full force at the appropriate moment (say, October, or during the Democratic Convention). The McCain campaign's move was intended to put Obama's campaign on the defensive, allow McCain to cry foul in the future (and win votes from incredulous and indignant whites about a black man in a position of power complaining about racism) anytime McCain brings up a racially divisive issue like affirmative action, and to "remind" voters that it was Obama who injected race into the campaign as he denounces the inevitable 527 ads to come that will play on Obama's blackness. McCain's new team has some very good chess players, and they thought several moves ahead. They were obviously waiting for this chance since Obama successfully inoculated against and foreshadowed future stealth attacks with his humorous remark a few weeks ago that "They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

McCain and his advisors know that McCain can't be the one to run ads that cross the race line, at least not blatantly the way George H.W. Bush did with the infamous Willie Horton ad. But he can lay the groundwork for those attacks, and he already has. His first ad of the general election, a biographical spot called "The American President," had all the trappings of a positive, inspirational piece. But both its name and its final line--"John McCain: The American president Americans have been waiting for"--suggest a more insidious subtext. What other kind of president is there? An un-American president? An anti-American president? An African-American president?

When you hear unusual syntax in a Republican ad, you know the goal is something other than the conscious text. Why didn't the ad end with the grammatically expectable tagline, "John McCain: The president Americans have been waiting for"? For the same reason that the "Harold, Call Me Ad" (whose creator McCain hired within weeks of the successful race-baiting ad against Harold Ford in Tennessee) ended that ad with the syntactically peculiar words (written in white against a black screen): "Harold Ford. He's just not right." (Figure out what the brain alternatives the brain is activating as it is trying to process that sentence.)

McCain's campaign has recently followed this "positive" ad with a series of attacks ads with a similar theme: "Country First," which now appears not only in his ads (which end, "John McCain: Country First") but also in his stump speeches, letters exhorting conservatives to give to his campaign, and the banners behind him as he speaks. On the surface, of course, only a paranoid could see something insidious about his advertising that he puts his country first, right? But half of branding is identifying a tagline that differentiates a "product" from its competitors, and a political campaign run by understudies of Karl Rove does not select its taglines without maximizing bang for the buck. How does that tagline distinguish the two candidates? What is the implicit contrast with Obama? Who or what would he put first as president?

Only a few weeks have passed since McCain substituted Rove operatives for the campaign team that gave him a small speech with a small audience against a putrid green background as Obama prepared to deliver a larger than life speech with a larger than life audience as the backdrop on the evening he clinched the nomination. The change is obvious, and it has yielded dividends. After an extraordinary week abroad that led Obama to surge to a 9-point lead in the polls, McCain's team managed, with the help of a relentlessly carping media (bending over backward not to be "biased" by showing people responding to Obama in ways they do not respond to McCain), to convince voters that they hadn't seen what they'd just seen with their own eyes, that everyone from European, Arab, and Israeli leaders to our own troops in Iraq were embracing Barack Obama as the breath of fresh American air that he is after eight years of bully diplomacy and revolving door military service--and to belittle the trip as mere "celebrity." Within days, Obama's lead evaporated, even though he had just answered the main question voters have consciously had about him, voiced in Hillary's 3am ad and McCain's relentless and often condescending taunts: Does he have the right stuff to be the leader of the free world?

Is There an Antidote?

The question, of course, is whether there is an antidote to what has come and what lies ahead in the racial minefield of the 2008 election. I believe there is, but it runs against the instincts of most Democratic consultants, which is to duck for cover and change the subject when uncomfortable elephants are in the room. What Obama and his team need to do more than all else is to resist the temptation to run away from talking honestly about race or speak about issues related to it euphemistically.

Most Americans are not overt racists. But virtually all of us have internalized images and ideas that we may consciously disavow--as when our hearts beat a little faster when a young black man is approaching us on a dark street. Our better angels on race are our conscious values. Most Americans consciously detest racism, and they aren't simply lying to themselves or to pollsters. The more Barack Obama can fight this battle on the conscious battlefield, where virtually all Americans oppose discrimination on the basis of arbitrary characteristics such as race, the more he will win the hearts and minds of the American people and the more they will feel they know and can trust him. The more he shows white rural voters and white working class males that he isn't afraid to talk about his color, that he isn't afraid to talk about what it was like to grow up with a white mom and white working class grandparents but to have a black face, that he understands what it's like to feel tough economic times because he's lived through those times and because he worked for years to help workers who'd seen their plant doors shutter, that he isn't afraid to talk about both affirmative action and extending it to kids from poor rural schools regardless of their color, that he isn't afraid to talk about his values and his hopes for his two children because they're the same values and hopes most Americans share for their kids, that he isn't afraid to take stands that are unpopular but is willing to talk about why he is taking them, the more he will earn their trust.

And he needs to make clear to those same voters that he understands that if they want to know who he is and wonder whether he understands people like them, that's perfectly reasonable. Sure, he may have a higher bar to cross for some because of his color--just as a white politician might at first have to prove himself to black people he wants to represent--but that that doesn't make them racists with KKK hoods in the back of their cars. He needs to learn the lessons of his own magnificent speech in Philadelphia, which, as poll number showed (contrary to media chatter), was not "over the heads" of the millions of Americans who saw an American politician, and an African-American one at that, speak openly about both prejudice and legitimate grievances on both sides, like the fear and anger of white parents whose children were bused to parts of town that would make any reasonable parent afraid, including the parents who have to rear their children there.

So how could Obama have responded to McCain's claim that his warning that the Republicans were going to try to make him out to be different, scary, and not like the faces on our currency (a great line, if you ask me) constituted "playing the race card" and "dealing from the bottom of the deck"? I won't presume to speak in Barack Obama's voice. Only he can do that, and God knows, he has an extraordinary voice, especially on this issue, as anyone knows who has read Dreams from My Father. But suppose he said something like this:

Senator McCain, I don't presume to know what's in your heart. I don't presume to know why you were in the minority even in your party in voting against the Martin Luther King holiday, any more than I presume to know what you were thinking when you and President Bush were eating birthday cake at your home in Arizona when people were hanging from the rooftops--not just black people--in New Orleans during Katrina. I don't presume to know what was in your heart when you suddenly reversed course this week from supporting affirmative action programs aimed at giving people who are willing to work hard a hand up and not a handout, to suddenly supporting a ballot initiative in your home state that would set the clock back 40 years, when you had previously described those ballot initiatives as thinly veiled efforts to divide American against American.

But I'll tell you what I do know. Your party has used race to try to divide us in every election since 1968. You have personally attacked my patriotism, and you're not going to do it again. You've spoken to me in patronizing ways that frankly a man of your limited knowledge of the issues that confront the American people--who can't even keep straight who the warring factions are in the Middle East, which is supposedly your strong suit, and who is so out of touch on the economy that his first response to the mortgage crisis was to blame it on the victims of unscrupulous lenders--has no business doing, and you will not speak to me that way again. You and your wife have attacked my character and the character of my wife, and I suggest you not try that again, because that is a road you do not want to go down. I have always assumed that you were a man of honor, but frankly, your relentlessly negative attacks on me and your indifference to the truth is starting to make a lot of Americans wonder. For a man who said he wanted to run an honorable campaign, how many weeks and how many phone calls from Karl Rove did it take you to find the low road?

My comments were intended simply to warn the American people not to be taken in by efforts to paint me as different, as outside the mainstream, as not like them, as not sharing their values, because they are attempts to divide Americans in a way that is un-American. No more, no less. Do I think you or your Republican allies will use my race to try to drive that point home? It's already been done. Did Fox News ever refer to your wife as your "Baby Mama?" And what exactly did your surrogate, Terry Hill, mean last week when he described me on national television as "more politician than he is American"?

Senator, I believe we are one nation, under God, indivisible, and I will do everything in my power as president, and in this campaign, to keep it that way. I suggest you aspire to the same standard. That's what I believe it means to be an American.

The goal of a response like this is not to answer a charge that is nothing but a smokescreen for an attempt to inject race into the race under the guise of attacking such tactics. It makes McCain and the fire he is lighting the issue, and it changes the focus of media attention from Obama's statement to McCain's statement, record, and history.

It has been 40 years since such an eloquent voice has emerged on race as the voice of Barack Obama. He and his campaign should have more faith in his capacity to use it.

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," recently released in paperback with a new postscript on the 2008 primaries.

Comments

[wayoutleft]

this continues a 1:53 a.m , aug. 5, comment. mr. westen unaccountably falls into the kind of traps he has so precisely detected previously. the very idea that obama or anybody needs to patronize white people as if somebody can so easily manipulate them is beyond insulting. obama's subtext: "since you are simple rubes, i must inoculate you against the simplest campaign appeals. i presume you are either afraid of black people or totally unfamiliar with them; therefore i have to reassure you about me since i am black. i also presume you conflate the name "hussein" with terrorists and must also reassure you in that regard." etc. just simply tells people he doesn't believe they rise to the level or rational decision-making. he basically tells them that to their faces; but he's so self-absorbed, he doesn't even know what he's saying. dem politicos usually have a touch of the fool about them.
westen says policy discussion can't overcome "stealth attacks"- conventional wisdom. i disagree. i believe policy discussion CAN overcome stealth attacks- as long as it's CLEAR., CONSISTENT, AND HONEST policy discussion that evinces some kind of RESPECT FOR AND FAITH IN its audience. however, obama doesn't have the clarity and consistency needed to transcend these attacks.

[cybergirl2]

White women have been by far the largest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. When going to a University or looking at the work force of major corporations, by and large over 95% of the population is white. When observing entry classes at banks and investment banks, of the 1000 or so in the class, about 15 to 20 will be African-American. This is "Affrimative Action" at work. It does not guarantee any sizeable representation of African-Americans in the Universities or the work place.
So placeing Affirmitive Action on the ballot as an issue is a joke and feeds into the paranoia of white people.

The arguments against Affirmative Action are not well founded because it does not threaten white jobs. Without Affrimative Action programs there would be virtually no African Americans at major corporations and Universities,

Those who want to end Affirmative Action never volunteer the obvious solution, which is to put more resources into schools so that more black students will be better equiped to enter prestigious univeristies. I am thinking along the lines of a "Manhattan Project" in magnitude rather than the same lame, ineffective policies that keep our public education rankied low, worldwide . This it would not only benefit African-Americans, but it would raise the level of education of all Americans. This way we would not have to rely on foreign graduate students to fill U.S. Universities and retain jobs from being outsource to places like India where education is revered and valued.

[buckeye487]

First, affirmative action is discrimination. Plain and simple. However, it may be a necessary evil, If it is true that without it there would be no blacks at corporations or Universities. I hope that is not true; I hope that corps and Universities would chose those best able to further the aims of their organization regardless of non-consequential personal attributes.

I agree that the real fix is education...but this country will never have the success of some foreign systems. In China, for example, the kids are in school all day 6 days a week and there is no complaining. If you are making trouble (or just not performing) you can be physically punished. there is no "good try" or "everyone gets a gold star so they have good self esteem". I have many friends and collegues from China, Taiwan, etc who have recounted these stories to me. The entitlement mentality here has to change.

As far as jobs to India... not about education, simply money. You can pay X/hour here or X/day or week there... all about the dollars, that's it.

[cybergirl2]

Why are the Democrats so bad at taking the Republicans on. John McCain is easy enough. It is Obvious enough to take him on. Obama does not have to raise the points well made in the aforementioned article. It would be good if he did along with 527 and other surrogates. I'd be happy to state the obvious about McCain, inan ad or on the radio: that he does play the race card, that he is a version of George Bus with a bad temper. He is worse than Bush. Sounds impossible but its true. McCain is wrong in many of his speaches especially about the economy and oil prices. Dick Cheney is paranoid and is not fit to be in the White House. He does not believe in democracy and has been doing whatever he can behind the scenes to thwart it. Strange stuff, but true.

Does America want to continue to be great? Sure. Can we do it with weak leadership such as Bush/Cheney and possibly McCain? Heck no!

If McCain wins the election, despite Obama getting out the right message, then this country is simply doomed to failure.

[SweetWilliam]

This is a good approach but I'd also like Barrack's campaign to ask McSame what he was doing during the Tailhook conventions. Is it true he got drunk and groped both airwomen and airmen? Don't know that he did but I'd love to hear him say he didn't.

[jdizl]

This is the biggest trap I've seen in a while...
If John Q. Public falls for the same silly season politics
then so be it...

This race should not be about getting to know each other's
race...wtf!

Know wonder we're a bankrupt country/society!
We can't focus on the real issues...or debate the real problems.
The fundementals...job creation, responsible financials, a promising path
for future generations, ect...

And to think this is the same kindergarten crew who wants to
get tough on Iran.

If this race takes the above road map mentioned then we are in for
a long correction!

[damorris1]

This is a great article. thanks for your contributions to HuffPost. All Dems should read "The Political Brain."

[wayoutleft]

what is suggested here just plays into mccain's hands. democrats always think they can send these ivy league guys to these milltowns and just buddy up and schmooze around with the hardhats in the pick-ups. why do they always think that? mystifying. now they have a black ivy-leaguer who they think can just get real copacetic about hard times growing up and what have you. this is a guy who can't even drink a strawberry milkshake without a brief excursus on caloric effects. what neither the big dems nor the press can accept is that most working guys aren't interested in them, whatsoever, at all. they are looking for- with very little hope- a chance to augment prosperity and security abroad. they aren't interested in anybody's life story whatsoever, at all. big dems can't accept that.
now everybody's stuck with a referendum on obama when it should have been a referendum on bush. the whole big star turn in germany sent obama into peak exposure months before the election. it's easy now for the gop staff. all they have to do is keep the spotlight on obama- make him constantly explain himself. the denver event stands a good chance of further distancing himself from mid-america as a remote hype-driven superstar.
i wish him luck. he'll need a lot of it if he can't get the spotlight back on the 8 years of gop malfeasance in the person of george bush.

[azyuwish]

Great post. You've really hit the nail on the head. This election SHOULD be a referendum on not only Bush, but the entire GOP and neocon agenda.

When Obama counters the things the McCain campaign throws at him, he should be calm but he should speak in down to earth terms. He needs to take each issue head on and then turn the TABLES on McCain and hammer away at the GOP policies that McCain would only continue and sustain. He cannot afford to sound wonky at this point in the campaign.

Now is when the less politically informed, the disaffected voter begins to start paying attention. Those of us who avidly read political blogs have already been sold, we "get" Obama and pretty much had a feel for him back in February. Competing against John McCain is a different business than competing against the KARL ROVE machine, which, by virtue of the fact that the McCain campaign has hired Rovian acolytes recently, is who the Obama campaign is now up against.

[brocksamson]

yes yes yes! correct on every point!
I sincerely hope Dr. Drew is, or soon will be, working for Obama for America

[tigs]

brilliant article ,it really brought out the repubs didnt it, they dont like the truth, i think obama has tried to be a decent man but mc cain has played it dirty ,so obama get out your big guns tell it like it is ,america needs you,it sure as hell dosnt need those repub cheats, go for it all the way ,watch mc cain whine and complain.

[Boadicea]

Always enjoy your brilliant commentary. Thanks for sharing.

I wish you would embark on a speaking tour and talk to ordinary AMericans about how their emotions are being played with. Start with Bill Moyers, visit Colbert a few times, and then get on Oprah. The View. Good Morning America.

Please, do it for your country. People need to understand that every effort is being made to distract them from the real issues.

You'll have to dumb it down, of course. Put it into sound bites. You know.

[RealityCheck101]

And you guys wonder why the Reagan democrats never came home. Keep talking down to them its really effective, you know for those "ordinary americans".

[azyuwish]

I heard what Bodicea is saying. Poor choice of words "dumb it down", but as I said in my earlier comment, the tactics Obama must use now are different than those he used when up against Hillary.

1. The voters paying attention to politics now, are not blog-heads typically; they're not
interested in minute details, otherwise they'd be participating in politics way earlier.

2. Obama is now competing against the Karl Rove playbook machine. He cannot
afford to sound "wonky". He needs to 'cut to the chase" and yes, speak in
"short hand", now called "sound bytes". It's called fighting fire with fire.

When John Kerry and his campaign relied on the fact that he would slaughter Bush in the debates (which he did) with his impressive intellect and grasp of the issues, they made a grave error. That was their major strategy, showcase Kerry's ability to articulate the issues and bolster his arguments with footnotes and detailed specifics. The theory was that Americans would really appreciate that. The GOP turned that ability AGAINST Kerry by calling him an elitist, a chablis drinking, late' sipping (effete) snob. AMERICANS decided that BUSH was the guy they'd "rather have a beer with". Don't you recall any of this??

So you are expecting Obama to do the same and not use "sound byte" delivery? Against Hillary back in Feb, sure. But now he has a totally different audience, he's got to adjust and not make the mistakes the Kerry campaign made.

[homer2811]

I was beginning to feel a bit gloomy over the latest polls showing McCain in a dead heat in the presidential race,and though I understand these polls change by the day,I know that the feelings I was experiencing were really the result of the direction of the Obama campaign,and because of your column,I'm feeling much better.You spoke to the very issue that I feel is the most overridding in this race.There is no way I could have expressed my thoughts any better .It's time not only for Barack to be a stand up guy.It's time for Barack to stand up.

[Pamela1961]

Obama seems to be getting a taste of his own political medicine. Near the end of his race with Sen. Clinton he used Rovian tactics. Actually it started with South Carolina way back in the beginning as his advisors, other staff and the media started using the race card one too many times against Sen. Clinton. He opened up the door. His people may have accused others of being racial if not racist starting with former President Clinton. As time went buy his charismatic message changed from one of hope and change to one of inuendo attacks. Placing the race card out there whenever Clinton disagreed with him. He brought her off message and placed her campaign into one of defense, but by doing so it opened up his own negative opinions of what was once a very upbeat and almost "kumbaya" message as some have called it.

He wanted to show strength by getting tougher with a more negative attack and it broke down the facade. Of course the whole episode of Rev. Wright and Obama's relationships with people who are perceived as "un-American" didn't help. Nor did the "typical white" and "bittergate" comments some saw as attacking those in his own party. Maybe his advisors got a bit cocky with the win?

It's a close race and anyone's to win or maybe Obama's to lose. But it's a race that has slipped out of the media's hand.

[mawrm]

Hillary Clinton hardly campaigned in South Carolina and sent Bill instead. Black AND white voters in South Carolina were miffed about Hillary's non-attendence because they've seen this game played. Folks who've lived in the Deep South in the 60s thru the 90s can tell you exactly how it works - bigoted white politicians would choose not to campaign in majority black areas and send surrogates instead. if they won despite not showing up, fine. If not, they'd blame "the blacks" voting against them, a particularly effective retort if a black candidate was going up against them, sure to anger white voters. That's why the people of South Carolina were not happy with Clinton's decision not to strongly campaign in South Carolina - the fact that we hear so many folks angrily saying "Obama only won SC only because of blacks" is proof positive that Clinton's decision achieved the desired effect - it pushed white voters away from Obama in later contests. Obama didn't force Bill to make the Jesse Jackson statement, and it was intentional because he could have used John Edwards to make the exact same point about someone winning a contest but losing the nomination if that was his true intent.
This race remains in large part in the media's hand. If they decide to be impartial, Obama has a chance, if not, he has a huge challenge.

[FOXYLADY]

If I am not mistaken, it was the McCain camp that started spewing the race issue. As for "that issue', it's a fact that Obama is racially mixed.........has live in Muslim oriented areas but mostly in Christian areas...........I am so disheartened when AOL etc. have their poles and see that the majority predict that McCain will win..........that SCARES THE HECK OUT OF ME!!!!! AND I'M AN ELDERLY WOMAN NOT EASILY SCARED ANYMORE!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!

[aaronburr]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Those nasty Republicans are saying bad things about the beloved Obama. The nerve!! Did you really think they were just going to roll over and wait for the coronation? Get a clue - it's a contact sport. And it's working particularly well because Obama himself is flopping around with unclear, contradictory or overly nuanced positions. In marketing, it's called "positioning" and it is axiomatic that if you don't position yourself your competition will position you. Obama is still largely unknown to the mass voting public and has yet to “make the sale” on the issues.

McCain is a sub-optimal candidate but he has a huge reservoir of good will with the voting public and all of the gaffe hunting and snide ad hominem attacks on his age and health will do nothing to erase that - may even make him more sympathetic. And BTW, snarking among the true believers about how stupid the voters are for liking McCain and not just signing on to the Obama love fest with his vague - albeit “feel good” - message isn’t going to help a whole lot either.

After McCain has sufficiently raised Obama’s negatives the campaign will start a relentless mantra of three or four simple, direct talking points and repeat them over and over. It worked against Gore, it worked against Kerry and it may very well work against Obama if he doesn’t get out ahead of it pretty fast.

[kitrat33]

Every day the messiah points out the fact that his campaign is "HISTORIC" of course we all understand that it is "HISTORIC" because he is black. We get it he is a black man......who is half white but we wouldn't want to mention that, because it is so much better to be able to throw out the race card if the polls are not moving in your favor.

[Tulka2]

No, you do not "get it". Let me 'splain it to you, Honey. The reason Obama's campaign is historic has as much to do with his internet roots as it has to do with his multi-ethnic background. Hello? We chose him. That is why he is the ONE! That is why he is special. We, the Democratic roots, for the first time in a long time, if not forever, did not follow the directives of the Democratic machine. We chose the perfect person for this time. I feel so sorry for the willing blind and deaf.

[azyuwish]

I feel so sorry for those of us who are affected by the choices made by the "willing blind and deaf."

Are they the majority of voters? We'll have to wait to find out.

[OneLiberalLady]

Why don't you stop dealing in name-calling and start talking about issues, like why you are supporting McCain. What about his policies and what you think he would do for the country appeals to you?