So when we ask what black means, well, pollsters say it may mean as many as 6 percentage points in lost votes for Obama.
This is the tightrope African-American politicians have walked since Tom Bradley ran for mayor of Los Angeles if not before, trying to be black without being BLACK, as in that angry boogeyman that haunts white America's dreams.
Obama has walked this tightrope about as well as anyone could, has answered racial questions when they have been unavoidable, but has visibly striven not to be defined or confined by them, to make his candidacy about something other than his paint job and his culture. But race, the horror movie monster, is never quite slain, and I suspect that by this point, Obama realizes this...
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This is a brilliant commentary. Obama's approach to race vis a vis this election has been that he identifies himself as a black man but that he is not running as a black man. This profoundly distinguishes his candidacy from previous efforts by black candidates. Obama is uniquely qualified to pull this off. It is not a campaign tactic. He believes it.
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