Obama plays the obvious card

"If you oppose me it's because of my race"

To which the response of many who doubt him might be "oh so we're racist now if we don't want you as President?".

According to the Daily Telegraph he's now painting the Republican campaign as one that focuses on his age, inexperience, name and race.

Yes of course, because your policies are so in depth, so amazingly well thought out, and beyond criticism. I mean how can you challenge a campaign that just says "Change" and is largely about the government spending more of other people's money, and pulling out of Iraq. The brilliance and innovations overwhelms me so much that I'd only support McCain because I wouldn't want a black man in the White House. I mean not liking tax increases, more agricultural subsidies, withdrawing from Iraq regardless of the consequences and largely empty talk about change couldn't be REAL reasons to oppose him could they?

Some on the left like to play the emotional blackmail game. It isn't about the Martin Luther King dream of judging someone on character, but saying if you don't like that, you're probably lying - it's probably race. Even worse it is the implication that getting a Black President is soooo important, that you should sweep aside concern about policies. However don't worry, Hillary would have done the same "it's because I'm a woman". Geraldine Ferraro has said as much about why she didn't get the nomination.

Well Mr Obama, the truth is the Democrats are going to raise issues around McCain's age, but most who oppose you do so because your campaign is vapid. Painting them as probably being racist just gives them another reasons to doubt how much depth there is to your campaign. Indeed while you deserve kudos for rejecting public funding of the campaign (because you've raised far more money than John McCain), if it had been the other way around can you honestly say you wouldn't have pulled out the perennial leftwing envy card "look he's got a lot of money behind him, he wont look after "ordinary people" like I will".

So the skindeep campaign of Obama is partly about skin colour - by his own call. However, it may backfire - it is one thing to simply say that some people will oppose him on racial grounds (which is true), some will support him pretty much purely on those grounds (which is no more intelligent), but another to imply that opposing him probably is racist in itself. That insults the intelligence of all those who are judging Obama the man and his policies, and says more about the man.