The New York Times headline on the presidential campaign story seems blindingly obvious: "4 Years Later, Race Is Still Issue for Some Voters." Anyone who's seen the African-Americans for Obama page on the re-election website knew that already. But of course those aren't the voters that Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise has in mind.

"As Mr. Obama braces for what most signs suggest will be a close re-election battle, race remains a powerful factor among a small minority of voters," Tavernise writes. She means a small minority of white voters, "especially, research suggests, those in economically distressed regions with high proportions of white working-class residents, like this one"--Jefferson County (Steubenville), Ohio, on the West Virginia border.

"In 50 interviews in this county over three days last week, 5 people raised race directly as a reason they would not vote for Mr. Obama," Tavernise reports. She says that she did not ask them "specifically about race, but about their views on the candidates generally," so that "those who raised the issue did so of their own accord."

If 45 of 50 interview subjects didn't mention race, one could just as easily take the position that the glass is 90% full rather than 10% empty. Tavernise suggests that racial hostility is jeopardizing Obama's re-election chances:

Given Ohio's critical importance as a swing state that will most likely be won or lost by the narrowest of margins, the fact that Mr. Obama's race is a deal-breaker for even a small number of otherwise loyal Democrats could have implications for the final results.

The problem with that is that "otherwise loyal Democrats" for whom "Mr. Obama's race is a deal-breaker" surely voted for John McCain in 2008, when Obama won decisively and carried Ohio by 4.6%. As Tavernise notes, Obama even beat McCain in Jefferson County, by 0.2%. It makes no sense to attribute a prospective Obama re-election loss to voters who reject him because he is black. They voted against him when he won. Any 2008 Obama supporter who defects this year by definition is someone who was willing to support a black candidate.