The Issue That Dared Not Speak Its Name is now on everybody’s lips, including John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s own. Is this good or bad? Maybe both.
On the positive side, it’s healthy to drag prejudice into the open (fresh air as a disinfectant and all that). Those who vote against Obama because of race should at the very least be made to squirm for it, if they have the capacity for being embarrassed, instead of hiding behind euphemisms.
But we are now involved in a more convoluted debate that threatens to diminish all sides. Let’s review the bidding:
After the Jeremiah Wright YouTube rants, Obama made his Philadelphia speech about race, was almost universally applauded for it and prepared to move on.
But Hillary Clinton’s sudden enormous popularity with “working-class voters” in the late primaries showed that millions had a wee problem seeing a black person in the White House, and it was inevitable that Republican swiftboaters would notice and act accordingly.