Deal em up, here comes the race card.

First up is Joe Biden who finally says what everyone is thinking:  Vote for Obama because he is back:¹

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, campaigning in North Carolina where black votes could help swing the state to the Democrats, said today that electing a black person to the White House would be transformative.

Biden said the policies of running mate Barack Obama make his presidency even more urgent and declared this to be the most important election that any living person has seen in their lifetime. But he particularly singled out the meaning of electing someone who is black.

“That will be a transformative event in American politics and internationally,” Biden said. “That all by itself will be significant.”

So, why is this necessary?

North Carolina last voted for a Democrat in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won much of the South. But the state has a large population of blacks galvanized by Obama’s candidacy, and the Illinois senator has competed aggressively here for months.

Oh, yea, that.  If they won’t vote for you for your failed policies, go for something more elemental.

Now, I posted this in a forum, and was taken to task by a friend who pointed out that Biden never explicitly said to vote for him because he is black.

Here is how I responded:

Context matters <name>. 

If you want to stand on the exact words, fine. I will assume you are a literalist then, and cannot be trusted to look at hyperbole, idioms and metaphors.

A speech is a method (of) communication, and the communication process has four key elements, a sender (biden), a receiver (the audience), a message and feedback.

If you look at what he said, who he said it to, where he was when he said it and the circumstances of why he said it, it makes sense.

He was talking to an audience largely black, but an audience who traditionally does not vote democrat.  He needs a message to inspire them to vote democrat, and the normal liberal mantra apparently doesn’t routinely fly.  So suddenly he is approaching the area from a side issue, nothing to do with Obama’s qualification, not who he is, but what he is.

Obama is black, and we have never had a black president before.

What makes electing him transformative?  His blackness.  (Not implied, openly stated) So the implication is that voting for Obama is transformative, and not doing so is not.

Electing him would be transformative, an interesting choice of words by the way.  What exactly about Obama is transformative?  His race?  How has electing a black man transformed anything?  What is being transformed?

Historic?  Sure.  Overdue perhaps?  Maybe.

But transformative?  Doesn’t this almost make Obama into a larger than life candidate?  Almost Holy

And why?  He is black.

And what is the race card?

“An idiomatic phrase that refers to the act of bringing the issue of race or racism into a debate, perhaps to obfuscate the matter. It is a metaphorical reference to card games in which a trump card may be used to gain an advantage.”

Sorry, it is clearly there, assuming you look at the context.

In the quest to elect Obama, the biggest no brainer is the fact that his race is an issue.  Of course it is.  Maybe democrats should come clean and admit that they want to elect a black man to shatter the last racial glass ceiling.  But if they did, they would have to admit that Barack is just a figure head to their goal, a tool.

They would have to acknowledge that his being chosen was pandering to one minority.

And what next?  A woman?  An Asian?  How about a Muslim?

Are we so eager to display our tolerance and progressiveness that we are willing to take our highest elected office and turn it into a meaningless position of appearance and appeasement?

And then there is this:²

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius publicly considered the possibility that Sen. Barack Obama’s race might be a factor in this year’s presidential election during an appearance here Tuesday.

“Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Sebelius asked in response to a question about why the election is so close. “That may be a factor. All the code language, all that doesn’t show up in the polls. And that may be a factor for some people.”

An interesting quote.  But something is missing.  You see, that may not be all of what she said:³

Hmmm. Didn’t Barack Obama just get done scolding John McCain over “dishonorable” attacks? Maybe he should save his criticisms for his surrogates, except that they’re parroting The One in his own baseless smears. In Iowa today, Kathleen Sebelius continued the Obama tradition of calling Republicans racists, and the other Obama tradition of producing absolutely no evidence for the allegation:

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accused Republicans on Tuesday of injecting race into the presidential campaign, arguing that they are using “code language” to convince Midwesterners that Democrat Barack Obama is different from them.

“Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Sebelius asked with sarcasm. “(Republicans) are not going to go lightly into the darkness.”

Sebelius was responding to a question from the audience at the Iowa City Public Library about the tenacity of Democrats and whether they would fight for victory as hard as Republicans in the closing weeks of the election.

She did not elaborate on her comment.

Well, they don’t usually elaborate, because they don’t have any evidence of it. It’s a smear, and has been shown thus by the Washington Post and ABC News during the summer. And while Obama whines about McCain’s supposed lies, the purveyor of Hope and Change has been throwing mud at McCain ever since locking up the nomination.

Now hang on.  That quote is a direct accusation to the republicans, where as the previous one can be taken either way.  Why does one version single out republicans?

Apparently the media decided to help…

Update: The AP or the Miami Herald has edited this article to remove the “(Republicans) will not go lightly into the darkness” quote.  Fortunately, I saved a cached version of the article here. 

…

Why did this story get changed?  Did someone at the AP or Herald decide that it made the smear tactics just too obvious?  Clearly, someone got second thoughts about including that quote from Sebelius, and either the AP or the Herald need to explain their sanitation of Sebelius’ remarks.

So a good question to the democrats is whether she is talking about race as a preferential factor that assists the democrats, or as a prejudicial one that hurts the democrats.  I would guess that her comment was too ambiguous, so a helpful editor decided to clarify it for us.  Then when that exposed their obvious bias, a senior editor removed it.

In either case, she played the race card, but it would be nice to know just who she intended to accuse when she did…

Wouldn’t it be super if they would just come right out and admit it?

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1. http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880914028 [back]
2. http://iowaindependent.com/5627/sebelius-obamas-race-may-be-a-factor [back]
3. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/16/sebelius-say-did-you-know-republicans-are-racists/ [back]

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