What do I mean by "blacken" Colin Powell and Barack Obama? I'll explain below.

First, a quick review: On Thursday, Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for a second term, declaring that he will vote for Obama in 2012.



“I signed on for a long patrol with President Obama and I don’t think this is the time to make such a sudden change," Colin Powell said on CBS’s “This Morning.”

Thursday night, Romney aide John Sununu opined that Powell endorsed Obama because, well, both of them are black.

Some in the media argued that Sununu's remarks were, in the words of one Daily News article:



"another unwelcome distraction for the Romney campaign"

Respectfully, I have to disagree. Once Gen. Powell, a Republican who also endorsed Obama in 2008, made his announcement, the Romney campaign knew that this would be the dominant political story of the day, and they had to step on it. What better way to step on it than to talk about the single most divisive topic in American politics and society today: race. More specifically, they brought up a topic that would thrill the right and titillate the media because it isn't "politically correct," which is of course code for a thing bigoted people love to say in private AND in public while also complaining that they can't really say such a thing in public without getting called a racist--even after they've just said it.

And changing the subject is exactly what the Romney campaign wanted to do. Instead of talking about how Colin Powell, emblematic of moderate Republicans everywhere, was sticking with the President, the media spent an entire day talking about whether and to what degree black people are voting for Obama because he's black. Sununu's statement also poured fuel on the always burning (for some) question of whether black people voting for Obama in overwhelming numbers means that black people are racist (see the comment board, for example, at this CNN article about race and Obama voters if you dare). Sununu's statement was like catnip for the media and for anyone who loves to work folks up about "reverse racism."

Given all this, is there any question that Sununu did exactly what the Romney campaign asked him to? Remember in July, when Sununu and Romney offered a highly-coordinated two-pronged assault on Obama's Americanness? On July 18, Romney called the President's ideas "extraordinarily foreign," and on that same day Sununu uttered his infamous line: "I wish this president would learn to be an American."

Sununu and Romney knew exactly what they were doing in July, and they knew exactly what they were doing 36 hours ago. The Romney campaign, for almost two years, has employed racially divisive language and has played on fears and anxieties held by some white Americans about cultural and demographic change in America. In this case, Romney and Sununu did it specifically to muddy the value of Colin Powell's announcement, to remind moderate whites who respect Gen. Powell that, above all else, Powell is just another black man sticking with his kind, and that they should stick with theirs and vote Romney.

It's just like Lee Atwater said: it's not 1954 anymore, so you can't say "ni%%er, ni%%er." In 2012, Romney and Sununu just say it in a different way.

But make no mistake, it's the same old racist strategy. And it makes me sick to my stomach.

