One of the most crass racist political attacks I've ever heard of was the one made on McCain's daughter in South Carolina in 2000. And now McCain's go the people who made it working for him. This is a man with no integrity and no soul.

McCain has been acting pretty desperate since Obama's successful world tour. Tye done everything wrong to try and make it look bad. And is Cindy getting younger day by day?

Obama is the one who introduced race into this week's debate. And why?! McCain was getting his ass kicked for running such a dispicable ad. Then Obama comes along with this bullshit about not looking like all the other presidents. Everyone knows what that means. Now the headlines are all about race rather than what they were 24 hours earlier, which was what a sleazy campaign McCain is running.

Obama stepped on a good news cycle and complicated it. This isn't the primaries. This electoral audience is not going to be sympathetic to the race complaint. It will work against Obama. It sounds like whining to me and it will turn away the actual racists. ...And there are alot of people out there who really are looking for an excuse to not vote for a black candidate. He needs to stop reminding them.

Obama's been getting away with playing the race card all along, lets face it. And, if Obama's latest statement isn't blatant racist inuendo, then I don't know what is.

Good and worthwhile point; and might I add, that if Hillary Clinton were the nominee we would be having some of these questions about whether or not "the sex card" was being played by either side.

IMO the answer to both the theoretical case with Clinton and the real-world example with Obama is that in fact both sides are playing "the [whatever] card." But, I need to qualify that there is a deeper issue here.

Glenn Greenwald today wrote a very good column consisting of an argument he makes against how politics and the media have a symbiotic relationship when it comes to shifting the national attention to personality-based attacks. It is nothing new to any Greenwald reader, nor should it be to you, of course.

For the Right to call Obama "arrogant" or insinuate that Clinton is a castrating "ball-buster" is from their standard attack script. That Obama is black, or that Clinton is a woman adds a layer of complexity to the calculus of this line of attack since it can be construed that any attack is either racist or sexist, and, as we have seen today, the Right can attempt to paint the other side as "crying wolf"; with Edwards, Gore or Kerry, no such distinction existed (even if the attacks on all three are necessarily sexist by painting each as feminized, womanly men -- something that I think you have a particularly good forum from which you can rightly call foul).

My point is, the Right has to be exceedingly careful how they choose to attack Obama this election cycle unlike previous ones where they could lie and slander with impunity. Whether or not this ends up hurting McCain or helping Obama remains to be seen, but it changes the calculus of an already deplorable smearing technique. Add to that the fact that Obama has been quick to respond to, debunk or defuse these attacks unline Gore, Edwards and Kerry and we have an entirely different ball game on our hands.

not campaign commercials or the media.Period.

If the American people voted GB twice(where was the moral high ground with those who voted for Bush in 04 with the swift boat campaign) why wont they vote McCain in? What has changed?

Remember it is the voters who think Obama is not an "All American" on numerous television interviews.

Nothing has changed folks.If you are not a WASP you are not going to be the President of the United States.Of course JFK was Catholic and look where he is now!

It isn't racist to call someone on racist behavior or innuendo. So no, playing the race card is not being racist.

Joan, just because you don't think that it is incendiary to juxtapose an image of a black man with images of young white women (presumably because someone like you wouldn't see anything wrong with such a pairing) doesn't mean that to others--those with racist tendencies and/or fear of black men--won't be affected by such images. Can you see how it might be incendiary to juxtapose an image of an openly gay man with a picture of a young boy in an attack ad, even if the text didn't say this guy might be a pedophile? I'm consistently unimpressed by your intuition about race.

Finally, the excuse that they are trying to show that Obama is vacuous is laughable because he is objectively anything but.

I'm no longer a fan of Salon. Joan is clueless. How does she not see McCain's actions for what they are: paint Obama as an uppity nigger who is after young slutty white women. It's as simple as that. Right out of the Rove textbook. Joan, you should be in full-throated outrage over this tactic. Josh Marshall gets it, Joan. You don't.

... is playing the "playing the race card" card.

You argue that my suggesting the vicitmization card works has no validity because Hillary is not still in the race.

Are you going to suggest it was not effective in diverting the press dialog for her a number of times? We heard about Eleanor Roosevelt when she over reached as First Lady. We had the discussion of the discussion of her clothes, hair styles and all the rest. We had her talking/whining about going first in debates, and on and on and on. It was a lifeline when things got a little tough.

We've had Obama race flare ups for a while, with the Clinton camp also getting touchy about it. The first one I remember was Joe Biden for saying he was clean cut and articulate. From there, we've had all sorts of shit going on with it.

On a different note, I am somewhat surprised that some have made the insinuation that having Paris Hilton on the screen with him was some subliminal way to go with the old race fear of black men with white women. I thought of it strictly as Hilton being a light weight bimbo and the insinuation that Obama's political depth was equally as "thin."

I won't say it is outlandish to think someone drew that conclusion, as there assholes everywhere. I will say it is likely not at all what the ad makers were trying to drum up.

That's just looking for an excuse to whine about race.