You are playing the race card.

You accuse Obama’s critics of being racists when the reality is they just disagree with his ideas. That’s playing the race card. You play it twice in your short response.

Wilder [a conservative pro-death penalty dem] winning the statehouse in Virgina shows that it isn’t race: it is politics.

This is the most insightful thing I have read on the race to date: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/215hpooz.asp?pg=1 Ignore the Standard’s editorializing and focus on Barone’s ideas.

In short: It is less about race and more about political mythologies: America is always right vs. America is usually wrong and in need of reform. Moral clarity is good vs. moral clarity is dangerous. Individualism [and guns yee haw!] is good vs. rampant individualism is dangerous. Here is the fault line, and about one half of America is on one side and the other half on the other.

Obama does well in university towns, he falls flat out in the countryside. “Those hicks are a bunch of racists” is tremendously satisfying to urban Obamistas [who wouldn't want to dismiss one's political opponents from the sphere of legitimate discourse?], but I just don’t think it reflects reality.

[I find it funny that the "if you aren't for Obama you are a racist" movement thinks *it* is at risk of being steamrolled. For fun, try voicing a criticism of Obama at your next San Francisco dinner party. I tried it in Madison, WI with disastrous results. I used "I just can't believe we are considering electing someone president who only has one year of national political experience." Ooh! The howling!]

I would actually suggest that race is the most important thing that O has going for him. It makes criticizing him absolutely beyond the pale. [Oh, and before you slap another race card down about that phrase, please look it up.]

Sure, he is charismatic, but the last time a charismatic, inexperienced, charming guy ran for the Dem nomination, his name was John Edwards and was branded a neophyte and a lightweight. People were so jazzed about a brown guy being president that all criticism was suspended.

While I have enjoyed being a “terrirst” every time I think the president does something stupid, I bet I will love being a racist every time I think the president does something stupid.

Sorry, I’m not playing cards, I’m discussing an election, and of course race plays a part. I refuse to be steamrolled into pretending it doesn’t just because some portion of the populace feels that to discuss the issue is somehow out of bounds — or that the moment one makes reference to it one has resorted to blanket charges of racism.

As for Virginia: actually, Obama is the first Democrat in years to be making a significant challenge in that relatively conservative state, and the race there is a statistical tie right now.

On the “common man” front, neither candidate qualifies for that label. We’ll just have to see which candidate ends up making a better connection with people — the one who at least once worked as a community organizer or the one who’s got eight homes.

[Thwap! That's the sound of the race card being played AGAIN!]

As much as the Obama’s rabid supporters in media would like the story to be: whites who work in non-technical occupations are inbred racists, the real fault line isn’t racial. It is cultural, economic, and political.

Go look at Virginia. The same state that sent a conservative black democrat to the governor’s mansion is rejected the Harvard lawyer who talks about the price of arugula in favor of the Yale lawyer who ostentatiously gulped down boilermakers.

The problem isn’t that the dems have nominated a black guy. The problem is that the dems have [again!] nominated a northerner who as perceived as a know it all elitist, out of touch with the experiences of the “common man.”

The last part may or may not reflect reality, but politics isn’t about reality. Thanks to the media/blogosphere internet echo chamber, the dems still don’t get it. They take any criticism of Obama and banish it with “oh, they’re just racists, ignore them.” The result is a race way tighter than it has any right to be.