Crossposted at An Idea Lives On
The Presidential race is taking an ugly turn today. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis is accusing Obama of playing the race card:
John McCain's campaign manager is accusing Barack Obama of unfairly using the issue of race, a significant accusation in a campaign featuring the first African-American major party nominee.
"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," said Rick Davis, in a statement issued from the McCain campaign. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."
What the McCain camp is doing here is pretty disgusting, and they might just get away with it.
The strategy is this: the McCain campaign can't appear to attack Obama because he's Black. That would quickly alienate large numbers of voters and let Obama win easily. But they do have an interest in portraying Obama as the "scary black man." So how can they achieve that without appearing racist? Accuse Obama of playing the race card, and hope he takes the bait. If they can draw him into a fight over whether he played the race card or not, they will effectively drive the narrative. The news story will be (at best) "Did Obama Play the Race Card?"
And so it doesn't matter that Obama didn't play the race card, and is in fact running a campaign about ideas and the future of this country. The voters will start to question whether we can have a President as divisive as Obama.
The Obama campaign has to play this one very carefully. I think their best option is to be direct and to the point. Call the McCain camp out on the tactic. Don't address the race issue, address the campaign tactic of making the election about race.