REACT: Obama's race card could be a joker

Barack Obama wins an impressive victory in South Carolina. No doubt about it. His victory assures that he will never be putting his feet up on the desk in the Oval Office – at least not his season.

What, you say? Since when does a big victory portend defeat? Answer: In the other-side-of-the-mirror world of politics. Remember, this is the Democrat primary and South Carolina is not a typical state – southern or otherwise.

Obama played the reverse race card brilliantly. The campaign that was alleged to NOT be about race was all about race in South Carolina. Why not? He learned the advantages of the race card in arguably the most racist political machine in American. He saw how it was used to advantage to bring in Harold Washington victory in a three-way primary race – with two white candidates (ironically, a man and a woman) to split the vote. And, he was there to witness the restoration of white supremacy in Chicago by making all issues a matter of black and white.

With more than fifty percent of the Democrat voters in South Carolina being black, this was more of a slam-dunk than an upset victory for Obama. Jessie Jackson, in hopeless pursuit of the Democrat presidential nomination, came out on top in South Carolina in both 1984 and 1988.

Having released the rabid dogs of racism from their cages, Obama has made race an issue – more than just the obvious fact that he is running as a black man. Dividing blacks and whites in South Carolina may have been good hardball politics for the day. However, as the Democrat primary moves to other states, there is likely be a backlash against Obama, who has shifted from the promise of a president of all the people – the uniter – to the activist representative of the black community. To some degree, he morphed himself a bit into the type of black candidate (a la Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) who get rejected by the broad base of voters.

In this latest primary, Obama got three-quarters of the black Democrat vote, leaving Hillary and Edwards to divide up the remaining 25 percent. The white vote was the reverse. Only race (read that racism), as the number one issue, could have produced that result.

These figures also show that Democrat voters a quite, shall we say, racially driven. The racism card would be a useless deuce if it did not win the hand. The South Carolina Primary was a black verses white contest. So much for the party of inclusion.

The backlash from South Carolina’s racist vote, and Obama’s pandering, is so significant that several left-wing bloggers accuse the Clintons of putting the race card face up – cynically surrendering South Carolina for gains in the big states coming up in a matter of days -- sort of anticipating the racist response of white Democrat voters. Okay, I said it was cynical, and I am just reporting what some of the more liberal bloggers are saying.

Considering the black community votes disproportionately – way disproportionately -- in the Democrat primary, Obama’s pleas for racial solidarity provide an edge. If he were to make it to the general election, he will have to somehow undo his black activist message. South Carolina now makes that a little more difficult.