This would have been a “McCain is over-reacting” post, except the Obama camp had to go and try to spin their way away from the quote. That part is ridiculous.

Obama is black, and young compared to McCain, and he looks different from what we’ve seen. In general, poor reasons to vote for or against him. McCain is old and white and looks like every other guy elected President. That’s his problem, even though those are also poor reasons to vote for or against him. It’s also JMs problem that most of the folks lukewarmly supporting him seem obsessed with making the case against Obama and not the affirmative case for McCain.

Obama would be utterly foolish to back away from this statement even an inch.

The more everyone drops the offhand phrase “playing the race card,” the less I understand what it’s supposed to mean. He’s black. Get over it. McCain is old. Get over it. Let’s play all the cards, and get them all out on the table. And decide whether they matter.

Whether you want to admit it or not, everything he said there has been coming out of the right wing talking point pool for months. He’s not patriotic enough….this Barack Osama is a muslin….and yes, now he’s arrogant (read “uppity black person”).

If you doubt that message is streaming from the right, spend some time with the far right, white bread, conservative base. It may not have traction with people of a more moderate persuasion, but the message is coming in loud and clear on the far right. I’ve spent some time in the past week on a church building project and they are receiving the code just fine.

You can say that the right wing slime machine is separate from McCain, and to some degree I will buy that, but there is also enough healthy skepticism to argue that McCain is simply letting the smear campaign work while he stays comfortably in the background.

For McCain’s folks to feign outrage, though, is pushing it. He knows what Obama is responding, too….

As for Obama’s response to McCain’s response….ugh. How embarrassing. We are not being played for idiots.