The Obama campaign tripped, and tripped hard, over the race card they tried to play over the last few days. Now even they are admitting the fact.
First off lets look how this whole thing started:
John McCain’s campaign manager is accusing Barack Obama of unfairly using the issue of race, a significant accusation in a campaign featuring the first African-American major party nominee.
“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” said Rick Davis, in a statement issued from the McCain campaign. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
Yesterday in Missouri, Obama predicted McCain and the GOP would use racially tinged attacks against him.
“What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
They denied this was playing the race card at first, which was foolish.
Senator Barack Obama is a man of few rhetorical stumbles, but this week a few of his words opened a racial door his campaign would prefer not to step through. When Senator John McCain’s camp replied by accusing him of playing the race card from the bottom of the deck, the Obama campaign seemed at least momentarily off balance.
The instinctive urge to punch back was tempered by the fact that race is a fire that could singe both candidates. So on Friday the Obama campaign, a carefully controlled lot on the best of days, reacted most cautiously as it sought to tamp down any sense that it was at war with Mr. McCain over who was the first to inject race into the contest. Mr. Obama made no mention of the issue, except for a brief reference in an interview with a local newspaper in Florida.
“I was in Union, Mo., which is 98 percent white, a rural conservative, and what I said was what I think everyone knows, which is that I don’t look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates,” he told The St. Petersburg Times. “There was nobody there who thought at all that I was trying to inject race in this.”
Baloney. Anyone reading that statement would understand the hidden meaning. I guess they finally understood this and finally admitted it:
When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.
“It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy,” Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid.
“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?”
The WaPo saw right through the whole episode and asked the Obama campaign for some examples of McCain “race based” attacks. All they got back was crickets:
First, Obama campaign officials, lacking any example of McCain ever pointing directly or indirectly at Obama’s race as an issue in the campaign, have backpedaled rapidly away from any suggestion that their Republican opponent is using the very tactics Obama suggested on Wednesday.
Campaign manager David Plouffe was pressed hard during a conference call on Thursday for examples and could not point to any. An inquiry to the Obama campaign later in the day produced no immediate response and later no answer to a direct question asking for evidence to buttress Obama’s suggestion that McCain would try to scare people into not voting for Obama because he’s black.
So basically the Obama campaign tried its best to do what they did to Clinton. Smear the person as a racist. They didn’t expect McCain to hit back so hard tho I suppose. The WaPo explains:
Before all this happened, McCain advisers believed that the Obama campaign successfully pinned a racist label on Bill Clinton during the during primaries — for comments that drew protests from some leading African American politicians — and were determined not to let the same happen to McCain. Also, they take personally any suggestion from the Obama campaign that they are part of a campaign that would play the race card and are indignant about it.
Good for them. Obama still doesn’t understand that this election is not about race but about his lack of character, his lack of judgement, his arrogance and ego, and his Marxist policy beliefs. Those issues will do him in, not race.
See author page
The Obamatons tried to pull the race card when Karl Rove wrote his op-ed for the Wall Street Journal suggesting Obama was arrogant. At Huffington Post they said that was code language meaning Obama was an “uppity” black man.
Of course that ignores the growing number of mainstream media types who are questioning Obama’s arrogance.
That didn’t stop “Arthur” Stoned from playing the “uppity” card on my post on this subject earlier this week.
Playing the race card comes naturally to these Dems. They’ve been using it effectively for years to shut down any criticism of any black liberal.
Of course that doesn’t stop them from putting out racist cartoons of Condi Rice, calling Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom” or referring to Condi Rice and Colin Powell as “House slaves.”
The real racism comes from Democrats!
If the guy doesn’t stop with the platitudes and come out with policies then the only people who would vote for him are those who think change, what ever that means, is good, hope, what ever that means, is good, or because they identify with him because he is risky, young or black. Really what is left?
In Microsoft Word, since the beginning of time, you’ve been able to add new words in less than 30 seconds to the spelling dictionary. Newspaper Spell Checkers are racist. You can complain about this by writing to press@pluck.com. You can check this out by copying the stuff below into your spell checker at your local paper:
Coolidge Eisenhower Nixon Truman Taft all work fine, no red underlines.
Barack Obama, is red-lined, might as well be Osama. A complete lack of respect.
I will donate $100 to the Obama campaign once this is fixed in The Union, Grass Valley, CA, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Douglas Keachie
Please add your name and pass this on, if you think this is an issue.
WTF are you smokin’, Doug?
“What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
No, you don’t look like them Obama because they’re green! Sorry, had to be said.
Seriously, the other day I asked a young gal at a local business if she was registered to vote. She said no, but she probably wouldn’t anyway because she’s uninformed, but if she did, she thought Obama should be president. The very next thing she said was how she’d heard her family members say derogatory things about his race, and wouldn’t vote for him because of that. She thought that was wrong. I confirmed that it was wrong, too, and the reason I’m not voting for him is his stance on the issues, not his color. She didn’t say anything after that. Maybe she hadn’t heard that before? It made me realize how much we need to get the word out in our every day lives, whenever it’s possible.
Curt typed:
First off lets look how this whole thing started:
That might be true if it weren’t so obviously false.
As is so often the case Bob Herbert (your groans are noted) has some compelling insights:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/opinion/02herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Mike typed:
‘That didn’t stop “Arthur” Stoned from playing the “uppity” card on my post on this subject earlier this week.’
Can you say ‘Southern strategy’? Can you say ‘states rights’? Can you say ‘silent majority’? Can you say, as John McCain’s ad said, ‘the American president Americans have been waiting for’?
Obviously it’s yes to all of the above.
Have a great weekend Mike.
of course he doesn’t look like the rest of the presidents on the dollar bills… they are dead. how bought that, he is alive and kicking, they are dead, i should hope he doesn’t look like them. what a moron, he pulled race into this and he is trying to shift the blame from himself. he isn’t black, he is mulato. what a dork.
In order to get the word out about Obama you need to find the word. And the word is here:
http://www.nextgenerationcorp.com/nextgenblog/
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/
Across the country, people (voters) are learning about Mr. Barack Hussein Obama. This is what the liberal left-wing media does not want people to know. And, over the last few months, since Hillary beat Obama in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Puerto Rico, the truth about Mr. Obama has served to open voter’s eyes and drop Obama’s popularity like a lead balloon.
When I think of “playing the race card” I think of Al Sharpton yelling at someone with a megaphone, not self depreciating jokes about funny names or lighthearted comments about dollars bills.
From the bottom of the deck?
Absolutely laughable.
John McCain looks like a hyperventaling, hypersensitive liberal.
Hypersensitive, Fit? You mean like Obama being upset at the New Yorker cover spread, when they’ve demeaned the GOP/Bush admin in the same format? And, no doubt, countless other pols they’ve made a target.
Or perhaps an example of hypersensitivity is when he was upset that Teflon Bill suggested he was living a fairy tale?
Maybe hypersensitive is when the NYTs analyzes a poll about his support based on race that doesn’t elevate him to the status he’s become accustomed to. So danged hypersensitive that he blasts the journalist with an email, and finds himself a good alternative mouth piece to rebut the disparing article.
A tad hypersensitive about his wife, too, don’t you think? And his preacher. And his friends. And his real estate deals. And his ears. And his… Sigh. We could go on about the “hypersensitivity” of Barack Obama. But there are better things in life to do.
Talk about playing the politics of fear. Obama trying to scare people into thinking that it’s the Republicans, it’s McCain who is racist, while McCain campaign has said absolutely nothing regarding the man’s race.
What does he honestly think? That the Republicans are stupid enough to do something like that?
This just shows that it’s Obama’s side who sees black and white, throwing the whole “one nation, under God” thing right out the window. Right alongside “one man, one vote”, the freedom of speech, and the meaning of deliberation of issues in Congress.
Oh yeah, I went there.
And there’s probably more to this list, but these are just off the top of my head.
Mata
Obama’s response to all of those was far more subdued than McCain’s faux outrage.
obama and his followers think that if they yell racism loud and long enough it has to be true. its not true. i haven’t read or scene anything that points to mccain being racist. i have a friend from africa who doesn’t understand the whole obama craze. he asked why we would follow someone who isn’t what he says he is. he didn’t go further with it, but i think we all know what he was talking about. obama wants to keep the whole “keep the brother down through racism” thing going, it makes his miss placed anger justified. i think he needs family of origin counseling because his reall bitch should be with his family, not the gop.
“When I think of “playing the race card’ . . .” — FitFit
And you are an authority, because . . . ?
“I wanna be one.” Just like Barack Hussein Obama is “an authority” despite the fact that he has no experience, little knowledge, and is unwilling to change when facts indicate he should. For someone touting the importance of “change,” he sure doesn’t know much about that, ether.
“Obama’s response to all of those was far more subdued than McCain’s faux outrage.”
If some slick POS calmly accused me of racism I would be pretty p.o.’d myself, and my outrage wouldn’t be “faux,” either. (If your subjective “proof” by stupid analogy is valid, then so is mine, which invalidates yours thereby making you wrong. Alternatively, if my argument isn’t valid, then neither is yours – so, either way you lose.)
IN FACT I’ve had some pretty heated exchanges with a few white racists for their calmly delivered false accusations against Blacks. So, when O’Bummer calmly falsely accuses Whites, then I have no guilt whatsoever when I smack that jerk down, because I have no unconscious bias for him to exploit. (…just thought I would throw that part in because I identified with, and was insulted by, FitFit’s cheep and logically flawed slander of McCain which he based on his own subjective idiocy.)
IF BLACKS CAN BE OUTRAGED BY BEING CALLED THE “N” WORD, THEN McCAIN HAS EVERY RIGHT TO BE OUTRAGED AT BEING CALLED A RACIST, no matter how “nicely” someone says it.
Yonason, if people have to restrict their comments to things that they are “authorities” in, then you need to close your hole about everything except life as a night manager at Taco Bell.
Fit #12
McCain’s “faux” outrage? Obama deliberately meant to imply that the GOP was going to make them afraid of him because he was black. Not one campaign ad by McCain discusses BHO’s race. Not one speech portrays Obama as a black in a negative light.
The “race card” was dealt over and over (as he made that comment as a regular staple in speeches over days) by Obama himself. It was a deliberate lie to suggest it was coming from the GOP.
If you think McCain’s outrage was “faux”, then he needed to step it up to where you recognized it was a slimey trick on BHO’s part. I, for one, am tired of taking the blame for the racism and gender bias shown by the DNC party to their own candidates. The gendless/colorless party can’t stop focusing on both.
In the meantime, the list of what Obama doesn’t want us to talk about grows steadily daily… and if any of those comes up, he’s plays the perfect victim… a position in which he’s had years of training.
WD-40 REVEALS HIS DARK SIDE – AGAIN
When FitFit said “When I think of ‘playing the race card’ . . .” he was speaking AS IF he were an authority, which is the point I was addressing.
I wasn’t telling him to shut up IF he wasn’t an authority. I was telling him to shut up because he was acting like one when he wasn’t. But, as usual, that slipped right past WD-40. Either that, or he is deliberately perverting what I said. Stupid, or perversely malicious? (or both?) And he ALWAYS responds the same way, like an angry child that wants to lash out and break things and/or hurt people – a VERY disturbed personality! Oh, well, at least he’s consistent.