I don’t even see the point of this post, Michael.  Seriously, we should start dissecting how black his selection in ties is.

He used the word hoodwinked.  He didn’t even cite Malcolm X, although if he had, who friggin cares?  Would he be appealing to white voters if he quotes a founding father?

Is it because he was talking to a predominantly African-American crowd?  is that what it is?  Seriously, I need some direction here.

There is nothing here to even talk about.  I’m just befuddled.  Taylor Marsh has dedicated her blog to defending her chosen candidate.  It makes sense that she would drag out everything possible to smear Obama, it’s in her interest.

I don’t see how it suits our interests here. 

After not days, but weeks of incessant racial references from the Clinton camp headlined by repeated appearances by the former president, blaming the Obama campaign for occasional responses is a bit like blaming the defendant of a malicious prosecution for mounting a defense at all. I mean, if the charges were untrue, it wouldn’t require a "defense", right?

Seriously, Michael, you seem to put Obama in an unfair double bind. You expect him to remain quiet and passive while the Clinton campaign over and over and over and over goes after him using brigades of surrogates and then if his campaign responds AT ALL you say he’s just as bad if not worse.

I don’t think you have been or are being fair to Obama. Perhaps it is an age thing — after seeing the last two iterations of the Clinton “Borg” political machine in operation steamrolling and demonizing all opposition, I am distressed to see it operating yet again in an even more ruthless form and with even greater disingenuous moxie in claiming “who me?” innocence. The Clintons love to dish it out but at even the slightest HINT of a response, they cry foul.

I am a white male moderate conservative approaching 40 who likes Barack Obama. How’s that possible for the “only blacks and youth support Obama” meme coming from the Clinton camp? And does the fact that I support him because his call for greater unity is backed by substantial gestures of consensus-seeking in many of his policy positions do anything to refute the corresponding meme that Obama is nothing but pretty-speaking fluff?

Or am I just supposed to be yet another one of the suckers who has been seduced by his pretty talkin’?

BTW, no one should ever underestimate the importance of gifted rhetoric. Since Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit”, many have recognized that a primary function of the Presidency is rhetorical — to inspire and to argue. The fact that much of this has been lost in the descent into a sound-bite politics is something lamentable, not something to be used as a standard to dismiss someone who comes along as an exception and a reminder of a stronger time.

What struck me in this was not race at all.

What struck me was Obama saying and I’m paraphrasing here "anything negative said about me is a LIE.  They are trying to bamboozle you.  I am perfect.

Moderate?  Concillitory?  His message was that anything that is said negative about him is a lie.  Anything that is meant to challenges his beliefs is a smear.  Anything meant so discuss his record is DC doubletalk.

He is so smooth.  He doesnt have to run on or defend anything he says.  He simply implies that any question of his record, his vote or his methods  as a question of his race, ethnicity, religion or integrity, turns it around and makes the questioner appear to be a smear meister.

He has so smoothly transformed any serious discussion of his record into an attack on him personally that he does not have to talk issues at all.  He simply stands up and tells us what we all know.  They try to bamboozle you in DC. 

That is the substance of his campaign?  Sad that he has even 10 percent of the vote let alone close to 40 percent.  I suspect that half of that 40 percent is anti Hillary.

I mean, take this in comparison to your earlier post on Bill’s statement about Obama and Jesse Jackson. Which is more extreme and aggressive? If he had followed it up with something like "The Clinton’s are looking out for Black America’s best interests" then you would have yourself a clip, but he focuses more on Religion than Race.

Hey Mike,Every time anyone quotes Washington, Jefferson, etc. they’re quoting slave owners who saw Blacks as an inferior race. I guess that’s ok with you. But God forbid anyone alludes to Malcolm, who was speaking at a time when Blacks were still being lynched and killed by cops and the klan, kept from voting, segregated, etc. which gave South disproportionate power. I guess you and others are showing your true colors when you play the master race card like this :-)I wished you and others would stop and take a good look in the mirror and at this country’s history and how the media has historically framed Black people according to its most downtrodden or self destructive elements before talking about anyone getting a "free ride" or playing the "race card."

If the words bamboozled and hoodwinked were part of modern Ameraicas every day leixcon, I do not believe there would be a problem. However Mr. Obama deliberatley chose words that most famously used by one of the most racially divisive person in modern memory.  I do not mean to comment on Malcom X’s justified outrage, rather on the fact that a presidential candidate that proposes to be the Great Uniter has chosen deliberately divisive language to cater to a primarily black audience. He did the same thing in Cleveland saturday night.