For the better part of the year, the McCain campaign, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement in general has gone to great lengths to portray Barack Obama as “the other.” He’s “different.” There’s a “mainstream” in America, and Obama’s not in it.
And Obama frequently acknowledges those differences. In his speech in Berlin last week, Obama told his audience, “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city,” a remark that generated some laughter. He uses similar language all the time.
With that in mind, and in the wake of a new McCain ad inexplicably connecting Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, Obama told voters in Missouri that Republicans are going to try to scare Americans, but no one should be fooled.
Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
Stumping in an economically challenged battleground state, Obama argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain their hold on the White House because they have little else to offer 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.” […]
“They’re going to say I’m a risky guy,” Obama said. “What they’re going to argue is I’m too risky. The real risk is that we miss the moment, that we do not do what’s needed because we’re afraid.”
Specifically, in talking about the concept of “risk” taking, Obama referred to attacks from “them” and “those guys.” Asked who Obama was referring to, campaign aides told ABC News he was “talking about his ‘opponents’ in general, writ large, the talk radio hosts and smear artists and such.”
No matter. This afternoon, the McCain campaign is screaming, “Race card!” to anyone who will listen.
Last night, ABC’s Jake Tapper suggested Obama might have taken a cheap shot, and the McCain campaign, desperate to do anything but talk about substance, is spending the day screaming bloody murder.
John McCain’s campaign accused Barack Obama on Thursday of playing racial politics a day after the Democratic candidate predicted Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out “he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
Obama “played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. He called Obama’s remarks “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
And if anyone knows anything about attacks that are “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,” it’s the McCain campaign.
Apparently, this all seems to be boiling down to whether Obama being different from “all those other presidents on the dollar bills” is about skin color.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told the AP that the senator was not referring to race. “What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”
Obama often makes references to his distinctions as a candidate, such as saying there are doubts among some voters because he has “a funny name.” At times he refers to his race as well, saying he looks different from any previous candidate but then adding that the differences are not just about race. Addressing supporters Tuesday night at a fundraiser in Springfield, Mo., he said, “It’s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama.”
Is this not obviously true? And if so, what is it the McCain gang is whining about, exactly?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The McCain campaign will obsess over this, the media will be thrilled to have a new chew-toy, and the political process will get slightly more mind-numbing that it was yesterday.
Just 96 days to go.