I guess since the campaign couldn’t come up with any examples of McCain pointing out Obama’s race, Obama has backed down from his earlier remarks:
“I don’t think it’s accurate to say my comments have nothing to do with race,” he told reporters here. But, he elaborated, “here’s what I was saying, and I think it should be undisputed: I don’t come out of central casting when it comes to presidential races, for a whole range of reasons. I’m young, new to the national scene. My name is Barack Obama. I’m African American. I was born in Hawaii. I spent time in Indonesia. I do not have the typical biography of a presidential candidate.”
From that, he said, the McCain campaign has tried to portray him as “risky.”
“In no way do I think John McCain’s campaign was being racist,” he concluded. “They’re cynical, and I think they want to distract people from the real issues.”
[...]
“If you think about this week, what they’ve been good at is distraction,” he said. “You’ve got statistics saying we’ve lost another 50,000 jobs, that Florida’s in recession for the first time in a decade and a half and what was being talked about were Paris and Britney. And so they’re clever on creating distractions from the issues that really matter in people’s lives.”
But isn’t Obama doing the same thing by saying that McCain isn’t dealing with issues just celebrities when the ad he’s condemning is an issue ad (drilling for oil being the issue)? And of course the media won’t press him on that.
posted August 3, 2008 at 1:33 pm
He should be thankful for any distraction at all, because it calls attention away from the fact that he’s made of smoke and vapor and has no real ideas or abilities other than talking nice and looking good in a suit.
He has one chance to win this election and one chance only: shame. Play the race card and play it early and often. Shame everybody into voting for him because of his color. It’s a nearly foolproof policy, and will give the DNC central committee what they want: a rubber-stamp president that will go along with whatever their union bosses say.
posted August 3, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Maybe I’ve missed something, has Obama’s campaign put out any ads poking fun at McCain? Has the DNC labeled McCain as St. John the Divine?
Have they made fun of the fact that John McCain is an “Old White Guy”?
What the GOP wants is a president that will give the Oil Industry carte blanche. What America wants is a leader, Black, white or polka-dotted.
posted August 3, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Wait a minute. Obama wouldn’t be backing down from earlier statements if he didn’t make them.
McCain is no racist. But there are plenty of racists supporting McCain, even though, and who would have thought it, the Black racists (Wright, Jackson, Pfleger the white priest who manages to be a Black racist, etc.) seem to resent or want to undercut Obama.
posted August 3, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Obama is not the one who wants a distraction. Look at the GOP record over the last few years, and it is one of almost complete failure in every aspect of policy. The Repubs need a distraction in the worst way, because they want this election to be about failure-boy Bush and his gang of boy blunders.
I don’t want a Messiah. I already have one.
I just want somebody competent who will not get us into another war we don’t need and can’t afford anyway, just because he wants to look tough. We can look tough all we like, but the bankers who really know what’s what are not going to care about that when we’re broke.
posted August 4, 2008 at 2:58 am
it’s like i said before, he didn’t call mccain a racist. there are no remarks for him to back down from. however, there are those political opportunists who parse every word obama says that could be interpreted and spun that way. how many many of the majority white people in his audience thought that it was a racial remark? case closed.
and now that most people understand that mccain was distorting the truth about the landstuhl dust up, why isn’t mccain still pushing it? why isn’t the campaign running their “remember landstuhl!” ads? because, it was designed to inflict the initial wound, but after the ad was discredited it became a liability where mccain might be seen as the dishonest politician that he is. same old swift boat tactics. well, it worked against him in 2004, why not against obama today?
will mccain stand up and be the post-racial man that he now pretends to be and denounce the undercurrent of racism in the whisper campaigns and the email campaigns within republican circles? don’t hold your breath.
posted August 4, 2008 at 10:22 pm
What did Obama mean when he said that he doesn’t look like the other presidents?
posted August 6, 2008 at 12:22 am
he’s explained what he meant. do you need for someone to find it for you?
if you want to speak frankly about appearances, what do you think he meant? what if he did mean his skin color? is that playing the race card if he points out the obvious? it’s not like he would be lying about righties making his color, his religion, and his name issues for voting against him.
how is it that the moronic, ignorant right is smart enough to turn on a computer (except for mccain) but stupid enough to believe the emails that they forward? these emails were on “the series of tubes” called “the internets” for months before obama had to address the issue of race. don’t tell me that you’re unaware of them, or who circulates them, or of the blatant racist comments by righties – the likes of guy thomas and zz – on conservative blogs.