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John McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis accused Obama of playing the race card after Obama characterized McCain’s recent attacks against him as trying to scare voters away from him.

Yesterday in Springfield, Missouri Obama said, “So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they are going to try to do is make you scared of me. Oh, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know he doesn’t look like all these other presidents on the dollar bills. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.”

The McCain campaign replied by accusing Obama of playing the race card, “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.” In a campaign where the McCain people have made idiotic charge after idiotic charge against Obama, this one takes the cake. According to the McCain campaign, Obama can’t point out the fact that he is the first black major party nominee.

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Using their logic, every time McCain refers to his military service, he would be playing the patriotism card. Notice how the McCain camp completely ignored Obama’s characterization of their attacks against him. The tactics that McCain is using against Obama in 2008 are the same ones that George W. Bush used against Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004. The Republicans always try to paint the Democrats as liberal, elitist and risky.

There was nothing divisive about Obama’s remarks. He was pointing out a fact. He does look different than previous presidents, and the main theme of the McCain campaign has been that different is bad. The Clintons tried to bring up the race issue during the Democratic primary and it backfired on them. To me, the point of the Davis statement today was to remind everyone that Obama is black. If anyone is trying to bring race into the discussion, it is Davis, not Obama.

Davis Statement