Here’s Barack Obama in Missouri from CNN:
“Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face,” Obama said at an appearance Wednesday in Springfield, Missouri. “So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. 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 those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”
Here’s the John McCain campaign’s response, again from CNN:
“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 manger Rick Davis said …
Truth is, we as Americans are in uncharted territory with this election. We as voters, members of the media, surrogates and both candidates have little idea of what’s acceptable to say when it comes to race now that we have for the first time in 230 years a minority candidate. Certain things are definitely off limits - Obama can’t call McCain “whitey” and McCain can’t call Obama the n-word - but when we get in the gray areas like what Obama said, it’s not real clear what’s okay. And the comments by Obama and the reaction by Davis is proof of just how unclear this area is.
I think Obama’s right, although I don’t sense from the McCain campaign a concerted effort to make race part of the election. There are factions out there, though, who want Obama’s blackness to be part of this race for those who see a man or woman of dark skin and may react with fear, prejudice, hate or disrespect. And so race is part of the election, and the factions are sending messages which reach some in this country as evidenced by Ohioans I know who said several weeks ago there was “just something I can’t trust” about Obama. I pressed. He’s never been charged or convicted of a crime, so it can’t be that right? “No, there’s just something about him that gives me the creeps.” There’s a college-educated person I know very well in Central Pennsylvania who won’t vote for Obama because “even though I know they’re not true, there’s just too many bad e-mails about him, and we just can’t take a chance on voting for him. It’s too risky.” Well, if you know the scurrilous e-mails aren’t true, what risk is there? “I don’t know, I just think it’s too risky.”
And just as those factions are wrong for fearmongering based on Obama’s mixed-race heritage, is Obama also wrong for making his African heritage a reason to vote for him?
Once this election is over, America is going to learn a lot about itself when it comes to minority candidates and the kind of campaign tactics that are appropriate and those that aren’t.
