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Obama Plays The Race Card, Again

[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED twice three times.]

It?s been said that every time a United States Senator looks in the mirror he or she sees someone who should be president. In this regard Obama is no different from any other Senator, or any other presidential candidate. Nevertheless, for a young man whose major actual accomplishment to date consists of writing two autobiographies, I think it fair to say that he has carried self-regard to a new level.

But there is this all-important (to Obama) ?difference? ? the pigmentation of the fact that stares presidentially back at him from his often-used mirror (the quotes to remind you that the essential, fundamental difference of those with darker skins provides the only justification for discriminating in their favor to provide ?diversity?).

Thus the candidate who staked much of his original appeal on his bi-racial identity, an identity that fueled his promise to move us beyond race, misses no opportunity to remind of his blackness (more chosen than inherited). It has become a standard trope of is campaign. Thus in Berlin he began his speech by stating that ?I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city.?

Obama constantly reminds voters that he?s black in order to attack anyone who opposes him (obviously Republicans, of course) of being racist. In Jacksonville, Florida, last month, for example, Reuters reported that ?Obama says Republicans will use race to stoke fear.?

?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??

Yes, he did mention it. And he continues to mention it. And mention it. And mention it. (He would show more class if he emulated Adlai Stevenson?s repeatedly mentioning in his 1956 campaign that he wasn?t going to mention President Eisenhower?s heart condition.) Thus yesterday Obama repeated his Jacksonville performance almost verbatim, warning Missouri voters, as reported in the Associated Press, that ?Republicans [are] Trying To Scare Voters.?

?Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they?re going to try to do is make you scared of me,? Obama said. ?You know, he?s not patriotic enough, he?s got a funny name, you know, he doesn?t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.?

.... Addressing supporters Tuesday night at a fundraiser in Springfield, he said, ?It?s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama.?

Obama is trying to run as both a bi-racial, trans-race candidate while at the same time emphasizing his blackness non-stop to as to energize the black vote and make any criticism of him seem racist. It?s a neat trick, and may work.

I think, and I?m sure many Republicans think, that electing Obama would indeed be ?a leap? ? of the off a cliff, not of faith, variety.

UPDATE: Republican Response

ABC News reports that the McCain campaign is not pleased with Obama?s repeated charges of Republican racism.

Sen. John McCain?s campaign is accusing Sen. Barack Obama of playing the race card by suggesting in recent campaign appearances that Republicans are going out of their way to point out that he is ?different.?
McCain and Obama

The McCain campaign scoffed at suggestions from Obama that the GOP will make Obama?s race an issue in the election.

?Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It?s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,? McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement released today.
....
The strong words from the McCain campaign came after Obama seemed to suggest during a couple of campaign stops in Missouri on Wednesday that the GOP was preparing to make an issue of his Muslim middle name and race, which turned some McCain insiders livid.

The Obama campaign?s response was, in effect, ?Who, me??

The Obama campaign denied Wednesday that the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate was referring to the McCain campaign directly, saying he meant opponents in general and right-wing radio commentators specifically.

Oh. So they were indirectly accusing the McCain of being racist. Well, in that case....

UPDATE II

In my earlier post on Obama playing the race card by accusing Republicans of inciting fear of him based on his race, I suggested that it might not be wise for him to keep reminding voters of his blackness, and quoted some words of wisdom from that always useful site, Protein Wisdom:

[Obama] is sounding about as post-racial as the Rev. Al Sharpton. Or about as post-racial as someone who spent the last 20 years under the spiritual tutelage of the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Fr. Michael Pfleger. Someone with that background ought to have some humility when it comes to dealing the race card, but he has chosen it as his opening gambit....

From the beginning of his political career Obama has been two-faced with regard to race (and I don?t mean Kenyan and Kansan), relying on appeals to black voters, favoring continued preferences for black citizens (and Hispanic citizens and non-citizens), all the while claiming to be the bi-racial candidate who will move the country beyond race. Sometimes, however, his slips are showing, and can be very revealing, as when he recently let slip that he actually favors ?properly structured? racial quotas.

Another similar revealing slip has yet to be purged from Obama?s current campaign web page touting his civil rights record, where he proudly proclaims that in his 1991 state senate campaign he ?helped 150,000 African Americans register to vote.?

Not Americans, Obama boasted, but African-Americans. (HatTip to, and paraphrase here of, Steve Sailer)

UPDATE III

Looking and sounding more and more like the little boy with the chocolate-stained mouth and fingers throwing a tantrum, stomping his feet, and shouting that he DID NOT raid the cookie jar, the Obama campaign continues to insist that Obama?s repetitive comments about how he looks are not about race.

Robert Gibbs, an Obama spokesman, said Thursday that Obama was not referring to race.

?He was describing that he was new to the political scene,? The Associated Press reported him as saying. ?He was referring to the fact that he didn?t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.?

Sure. You bet. Right. Obama?s comment that ?he doesn?t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills? is not really about his looks but his ?history.?

I would think that someone with so little history would not want to make an issue of it.

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 31, 2008 (boomark / email).