Health Care BS

First, let’s stop pretending Barack Obama didn’t play the race card. Here’s what he said about McCain and his campaign:

What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. 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.’

He was obviously insinuating that the McCain campaign is going to run a racist campaign. It must have been an unpleasant surprise to Obama and his people when a normally pliant Press corps asked them to support the veiled accusation:

Campaign manager David Plouffe was pressed hard during a conference call on Thursday for examples and could not point to any … Obama campaign officials, lacking any example of McCain ever pointing directly or indirectly at Obama’s race as an issue in the campaign, have backpedaled rapidly away from any suggestion that their Republican opponent is using the tactics Obama suggested on Wednesday.

So, Obama played the race card and got called on it. The interesting question, however, isn’t if he played it but why he did so this early in the general election campaign. Perhaps the answer can be found here:

That’s right. After all of the adoring press coverage Obama has received for months, he’s still tied with an underfunded Republican running a sloppy campaign. And if the primary season is any guide, the poll probably overstates Obama’s genuine support.

You can bet Obama’s people are worried about these numbers. They know that conditions have been as favorable for their candidate as they are ever likely to get, and yet they can’t pull away from McCain.

That’s why they deployed the race card. They’re panicking.