Barack Obama doesn't usually bite when the hooks come with labels. The kind of thinking he has to offer doesn't usually accommodate the mindset that is decorated with the "we" usage. There are good and not-so-good aspects of affirmative action. Is that so hard to grasp? Why keep turning this man back into a choice between tiresome and futile alternatives?

The flip side is have "we" gotten past racism. No to both but may the time come.

bguetti, Nice comment.

That's one thing I like about him, and also about McCain. You can't win high office, let alone the presidency, without a team, but neither of them are primarily team players. They are their own people first. Most often, when Obama talks about an issue, he sounds like a smart person thinking about that issue, not like a guy with an agenda that the issue touches. I don't know if it's a good way to get elected, but it makes him worth listening to.

Yes, Barack Obama is comfortable in the world of ideas without being an ideologue. How refreshing!

Obama 08!

America's greatest warrior for equal justice under law and an end to reverse racism is, like Barack, a man of mixed ancestry. He is Ward Connerly. And his life's mission is to drive through reverse discrimination the same stake America drove through segregation.

And when one considers that the GOP establishment has often fled Connerly's cause and campaigns, his record of achievement is remarkable.

Connerly was chief engineer of CCRI, the 1996 California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action based on ethnicity, race or gender in all public institutions of America's most populous state. Two years later, Connerly racked up a second victory in Washington.

In 2006, Connerly went to Michigan to overturn an affirmative action policy that kept Jennifer Gratz out of the University of Michigan, though she had superior grades and performance records than many minority students admitted. The Michigan proposition also carried and has been upheld by the courts.

One U.S. senator, however, taped an ad denouncing Connerly's Proposition 2 in Michigan and endorsed affirmative action for minorities and women. That senator was Barack Obama.