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The Obama is presumptious theme is so good that McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis sent out an e-mail to all "interested parties" with the subject line Barack Obama's Celebrity. It quotes Milbank's "presumptuous" statement and pumps it up a notch by referring to "Barack Obama's presumptuous arrogance".

I predict we'll be hearing the word presumptuous a lot in the next few days -- and much longer if the McCain campaign, with the help of its media enablers, can get it to stick. In fact, it's pretty much a perfect Republican campaign theme because it not only accuses Barack Obama of being something presumably bad that no one can prove or, more importantly, disprove; it blows the kind of racist dog whistle that Republican love to use against African American Democrats.

Dog whistle politics is a key component of the infamous Republican Southern Strategy that has been responsible for the election of all Republican presidents since Nixon. So it's inevitable that the McCain campaign has rolled it out again against the biggest target ever, Barack Obama. The temptation is just irresistible.

In this case the dog whistle is that Obama is being presumptuous. To most Americans presumptuous means, well, presumptuous. But if you check your thesaurus you'll find that a synonym for presumptuous is uppity. You know, uppity as in uppity n*****. This connection will not be lost on the racists among us. They will chuckle to themselves about the clever way the McCain campaign and their media enablers are calling Obama uppity without actually using the word.

And of course to them it's so obvious that Obama is being uppity. After all, what could be more uppity than a African American candidate acting presidential even before he's elected president? Maybe an African American actually being president?

tubbs, i don't like mccain anymore than bo, but you really stretched for that connotation......

Right on. This is precisely the intended connotation implied by the use of the word "presumptious". I'm no huge fan of Obama's, but am less a fan of McCain who has apparently abandoned all previous attempts at talking straight, or whatever it was he was doing during the last couple of decades in order to scrape the mud from the Keating scandal off of his expensive shoes. In 2000 I could have been convinced to vote for him but those days are long gone. If you believe, as the McCain campaign wants you to believe, that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", then you're just not paying attention. The choice of any word in a political ad is no accident. "Arrogant" just didn't hit the mark... it sounds too much like "elitist" which wanders a bit far from the subliminal drumbeat of fearmongering that is intended here. An elitist is someone who is well educated and successful, which is hardly the portrait that "presumptuous" paints. Being presumptuous means that you feel entitled to something. Which begs the question, just who is entitled to be president? According to McCain, the answer is elderly white political animals like himself. Everyone else is just too danged uppity. Hey, you black kids get off my lawn!!!!!