For all the talk during the Democratic primary contest about how the Clintons were injecting the issue of race into the campaign, it was really Obama who was most energetically slapping down the race card.
It was little noticed in the uproar over his elitist remarks about the rural rubes who "cling" to their guns and their God that he also implied they were racists, too. At the chardonnay and brie fundraising reception for the Democratic high rollers in the hilltop mansion in San Francisco's Pacific Heights, he intoned what "they" would be saying, "And did I mention he's black?"
Now that the general campaign has for all practical purposes begun, Obama is once again throwing down the race card, this time at John McCain.
What Obama says about the opposition is now about John McCain. So there he was once again, at a Democratic fundraiser in Jacksonville on June 20th, suggesting -- with no history to justify such a remark -- that his opponent will inject the issue of race into the campaign: "And did I mention that he's black?"
Such a slander against McCain is unpardonable, but it's, sadly, every day fare for Obama. Obama knows many Americans would welcome a qualified black president and fanning the flames of racism works to his advantage. It did against the Clintons.
Michael Barone agrees with Obama that the issue of race is an Obama plus.
By raising the specter of racial attacks from John McCain (without any justification for doing so) Obama seeks to divert attention from -- and to choke off all criticism of -- his inexperience, extremism, embrace of black power and his many troubling personal associations, hoping he can brand all such criticism of him as "racism."
Michael Barone has done some historical analysis and concludes that Americans have already passed the "race" test and have nothing to prove with Obama.
Citing polls when Colin Powell was a possible candidate for president, Barone says this:
I would submit that the vast majority of American voters have already passed the test. They've shown they're willing to vote for a black candidate, provided he has acceptable views on issues and appropriate experience for the job.
Barone concludes:
On balance I think Obama's race has been a political asset. I believe that most Americans think it would be a good thing, all other things being reasonably equal, for our country to elect a black president. I know I feel that way myself. I think that impulse has inspired many voters, ever since his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, to give Obama a sympathetic look-over, to be readier perhaps to appreciate his strengths and to overlook his weaknesses than they might be with an otherwise similar non-black candidate. The refusal of a very small number of voters to support a black candidate does not, I think, offset this significant advantage. The Obama candidacy is indeed a test -- a test not of American voters, but of Barack Obama. (emphasis added)
As Michael Barone suggests, Amercians should look beyond the color of skin and the soaring rhetoric to evaluate Obama's experience, his extremism, his embrace of black power and those many troubling personal associations he chose for himself.
Is this the person to be commander-in-chief of the United States in a time of peril?
Obama's Candidacy is a TestBy Michael Barone in U.S. News & World Report
July 6, 2008"They're going to try to make you afraid of me," Barack Obama told the audience at a Jacksonville fundraiser last month. "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?" (emphasis added) Obama was doing here by inference what many of his supporters do more explicitly. Obama's candidacy, in their view, puts American voters to the test: Are they open-minded enough to vote for a black candidate? Or are they still so overcome by racial prejudice as to reject the first black candidate with a serious chance to win?
There are obviously problems with this. In a nation of 303 million, there are surely some people who won't vote for Obama because he's black. But there are a lot more Americans who aren't willing to vote for him for other reasons that have nothing to do with race -- because he's a Democrat, because he's taken liberal positions on many issues, because (to quote his own words) he's young and inexperienced.
In any case, Obama's candidacy by itself is not a test of whether Americans are unwilling to vote for a black candidate; to determine that, you would have to take into account whether those unwilling to vote for him would be willing to vote for a different kind of black candidate. And as it happens, there is such a test case. In the fall of 1995, Colin Powell, fresh from a boffo book tour, was (or was widely thought to be) contemplating running for president. There were plenty of polls matching him as the Republican nominee against incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. And running well: A typical Gallup poll had him leading Clinton 54 to 39 percent.
Click on the title of the article to read the entire piece.
