The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is Obama Playing the Race Card?

A guest post from Slate's John Dickerson:

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said this week. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

I'll give Obama "scared," and he's got a good case on the patriotism charge, too, but race? Wouldn't the world have gone nuts if Hillary had said something similar about being a woman? They would have said she's playing the gender card. Despite the reckless McCain attacks, about which I've already written, there's no evidence that he's ever made Obama's race an issue. In fact, he's done the opposite -- he called out one of his supporters for doing so at a public event. Immediately, without it becoming a flap. McCain's "black" daughter (she's actually Bangladeshi), we also might remember, was used in an attack against him. So, why isn't Obama going too far here? I suppose one response is that if McCain can completely make up things about Obama then Obama can make up things about McCain. Of course, yelling racism is taking it one step beyond making up his positions on oil, energy taxes, and his visit to the troops in Germany.