According to Matthew Rothschild, "the race boils down to racism":

With Election Day approaching, McCain surrogates or supporters may not be able to resist the temptation to fan the flames of racism. Expect the snippets of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to resurface. Expect video of Michelle Obama sounding militant. Expect disgusting ads about Obama's admitted drug use as a very young man. Expect that picture of Obama in Muslim garb again.

This campaign will ultimately be a referendum on the intractability of racism.

The way things are going with these endless charges of "racism," I think it's more likely to be a referendum on the intractability of the imputation of racism. Which of course the imputers would claim proves their point. That's because when an issue -- dishonest or not -- is injected into a campaign as relentlessly as "racism" is being injected into this campaign, it's there, and it won't go away easily. The old "try not to think about elephants" routine. American voters are being inundated -- on a daily basis now -- with the following, deeply ugly, message: if you're white and you don't vote for Obama it's because you're a racist.

The only people who have any hope of a defense are Republican stalwarts. They can say "I just voted the Party line as I always do." Not so for Democrats and independents. If they vote for McCain, they will have to live with the unsettling knowledge that post-election inquisitors will always be able to ask them who they voted for in 2008, and if they answer McCain, it will be seen as suspect. And even if they say, "It's my business who I voted for!" leftie McCarthyites will take that as a tacit admission that they voted for McCain. And either way, they're obviously racists, right?

Not that I could ever convince anyone on the left that I'm anything but a cracker, but I thought it might at least be entertaining to take a look at the "flames" Mr. Rothschild cites in his indictment piece.

It's hard to forget a malevolent clown like Wright. I can't stand the guy, although as I have said many times, I think Obama's close association with Bill Ayers is far worse. Forgive me if I am wrong, but not only were the Wright snippets first dug up by Clinton campaign operatives, but what really upset people was the one showing the guy screaming "God damn America!" Please correct me if they were really upset by Wright's race and not by the hateful things he said, but that's my memory of it, and I don't see what Jeremiah Wright has to do with race. Unless, of course, it's the same identity politics formulation that because he is black, all criticism of him by whites is assumed to be racist. (Or might the author think that hating America is "black"? The thought would never cross my mind, but I'm just wondering.)

Militant? I remember a video in which she said that she was proud to be an American for the first time in her life, but that didn't strike me as especially militant. The debate revolved around her patriotism, which Obama's opponents were questioning.

Hmmm.... So what's with the word "militant"? Am I missing the videos of her calling for armed struggle against "the Beast" like Ayers and his odious wife? I doubt such videos exist, and even if they did -- even if she had been as loony as the Weather Underground -- how would pointing that out be a form of racism? I think "unpatriotic" is the correct word here. Why didn't he say "Expect video of Michelle Obama sounding unpatriotic?" Is it possible that Rothschild is uncomfortable with the word? Or does he think that "militant" is a better word to fan the flames of racism because somehow (in his mind, at least) militant equals black? (Frankly, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear that was racist thinking on Rothschild's part. But he can't be the racist, because he's leveling the accusation. So forgive me!)

Personally, I thought using that picture was a low blow, and the Clinton campaign should have been ashamed for doing it. But it fed into the meme that Obama was a Muslim, and Islam is a religion, not a race. I don't like anti-Muslim bigotry, but it is no more "racism" than is anti-Catholic bigotry.

I think the racist "flames" are being fanned by the hyperventilation of Rothschild's mind.

The problem is, if enough people want this race to be a referendum about race, it will become that.

Whether it should won't matter.