Doesn't his image depend on how much control he has over the "earned" coverage? There are better things to be than the generic Black guy, as you say, but there are also worse things, if some right-wing operatives have their way. E.g.- he's not just a black guy, he's a fanatical muslim black guy who hates america. etc.

Excellent. Agreed. This seems exactly right in my own case: "voters will think of him as this sui generis character named Barack Obama, not as 'that black guy who's running for president.'" It's very Colbertesque to say it, but I have to be reminded (by the media mostly, especially the obsessives like Judis) that Obama is black.

I agree with you, especially since Obama has foregone public funding and can now buy as many ads as he can afford, which should be a lot.  This will get his face and message in front of many people, and he won't be just that generic black guy, but Obama.  That tends to be how my mother relates to blacks - all blacks are criminals, except for the blacks she knows - and I suspect there are a lot more people like her.

I noticed that too ralph - I rarely notice Obama's race anymore.

I'm more concerned that the Clinton Effect will rear its ugly head.

I  feel like the tornado is over and now there's an eerie silence. Anyone noticing how calm the campaigning is with the Clinton's gone? We're back to almost pre-Rove, pre-Clinton, pre-Dick Morris politics. The calm is driving Talk Radio and other pond scum nuts, but at least it's clarifying: All of that awful stuff tossed at Obama was coming from inside the Democratic Party.

I don't know if will appear in polls but I saw-heard the reverse Bradley Effect after the primaries and didn't have a clue until people voted. People did 'come out' to me as having voted for Barack & that wasn't their public position.

After Hillary was eliminated I've seen even more people adopt a sort of double standard where their general prejudices haven't changed...but they've found a loophole will allow them to vote for Obama. But it shouldn't be surprising because people have made 'exceptions' in their racist attitude and Hendrix made the cut along with Michael Jordan so full blown racists are scarcer every decade. I know an older guy was for Barack but did not know he was black (honest)...Of course he had to switch gears when he was informed! It took awhile but now he's "judging Barack as an individual" (but doesn't admit it to everyone...).

fougasseu, it's going to get louder soon.  McCain and Co. will soon be releasing ads of the form "Here's what Clinton said about Obama..." McCain's already trying some of her tactics, mostly the inexperience argument.  It's only failing because it's already been tried.  I think you're missing some of this because you're too busy laughing at McCain's green jello wall of doom (sorry, too much Invader Zim).  

I agree wtih posters that the Bradley effect will probably never be squeezed out of the polling process entirely but I do think that enough voters have already actually voted for Obama in the primaries to alleviate some of my initial concern. That said, I would really watch places like Missouri, Virginia, and Ohio. Like it or not, there is a certain demographic who, historically, have been aligned with the Bradley-Wilder effect and those states may have more of that particular type of voter.

I'm not sure how important race will be. I think it's his name that's unfortunate. So you're average joe walks into a polling booth. Hasn't spent much timing following the campaign, just caught tidbits here and there. He decides to vote to extend his lunch hour a little bit. Closes the curtain behind him, looks down: BARACK OBAMA or JOHN McCAIN.

"Barack O-whata??? Ol' Johnny boy it is!"

If Obama's name was "Harold Ford," he'd have much better chances.

Jaunty/Cookie, as a Virginian, I reject your hypothesis that states such as VA may have more of the type of voter prone to promoting the Bradley effect.  If anything, the former Confederate states are LEAST prone to the Bradley effect, in that to the degree that racism is more acceptable there, racists are more apt to speak truthfully to pollsters.  I'd say your own state of California is more likely to produce a Bradley effect--after all the Bradley effect was first observed there.

Yes, I know Wilder was in Virginia.  You will remember, however, that Wilder WON.

As someone who could be characterized as "Obama Lite" (I'm "multi-racial" with a half-black father; a lawyer; was born in 1965; and generally viewed as being "articulate"), I am well acquainted with the "I don't think of you as black" sentiment.  

My father-in-law is a 68 year old white man from the Deep South and a descendant of a Confederate war hero (I will not name who).  He was initially against my wife and I getting married and having children.  Since then, I have no doubt that he has come to love me and his "black" grandchildren.  (My older daughter is rarely perceived as being anything but white, and typically Polish or German.  As my wife's grand uncle said when my older daughter was born, "at least she doesn't look like a niggra."  My younger daughter is usually taken as being Indian or Arab, which is accurate as the other half of my father was Asian Indian and my mom has Middle Eastern ancestry.  But no Poles or Germans on either side).

However, my father-in-law knows me in a way that it is impossible for any average person to come to know Obama.  Despite his long-standing Republican affiliation, he is an Obama supporter.  Is this attributable to me in part besides the fact that he believes that Bush and the Republicans have ruined the country?  Perhaps.  However, I believe that if your white "average Joe" comes to think of Obama as a guy he could have a beer with, Obama may in fact win or loose on the merits and not his complexion.

We're really entering unknown territory here, and Obama is not just provoking certain semi-covert responses by his candidacy (in the sense that they just come out in their static form), but he's also flushing them out and making them visible in a way that forces a change.  Every time someone thinks or says, "I don't like Obama," and they hear a voice in their own head or from a friend or family member questioning why, there's a slight change in process.  Multiply that by a few million conversations over the summer and fall.  Even if Obama doesn't make it, he'll have shifted so much psychic furniture that the country won't ever be the same again.

It's not uncommon for people to behave in a contradictory way when it comes to an interface between the  beliefs they hold and the real world. My father was a white supremicist. On the other hand, he was proud to  be considered a "brother" by the black inmates he helped with legal work while in prison.

Does it occur to anyone here that someone voting for McCain is not voting against a "black man".  He's voting for McCain.

The unspoken assumption here is that a vote not for Obama is somehow a vote for racism.

I will repeat what I have posted here umpteen times.  If Colin Powell were running, racism would be uttered much, much less as an issue.

There are multiple problems with Obama's candidacy.  His race is the least of it.  His very Left but well camouflaged politics and cultural leanings is the most of it.  

His not fully comprehended past and many questionable associations is the rest of it.

Race has primarily risen as an issue in this campaign either because of the highly racists utterances of Reverend Wright and Father whatizname.  And the racist inferences of Obama's Democratic opponents, your very own Clinton's whom Democrats foisted upon us for lo these many years.

Can the racist finger pointing and let's talk about the big problem in this campaign:  the prospect of the farthest Left president in our history.

I think you've got it backwards ChanRobt. What's at stake are not the firmly commited Republicans, but the voters who don't much like McCain, but who may have a psychological barrier about voting a black man into the office of president.

At a wedding would you without hesitation ask a black woman to dance (you do not know her, she's a friend of a friend), or more accurately, do you ask a black woman to dance with the same feelings as a white woman (or just stand at the bar)? What do you do at the bank when you have two tellers to choose, one black, one white? Now substitute the "you" with dozens of combinations of possible white male voters.

At the moment millions of white males vote, they won't be thinking about the issues exclusively, they'll be thinking/feeling about race as well. Not true for some white males (the amazingly color-blind liberal!), but I believe true for most. Sorry, my family lives in Northern Kentucky.

The first questions are easy for me, fougasseu. I'm white, 53 but have always been a "judge not" sort of person.  My Jewish father and Roman Catholic mother were married in '49 and I admit my experience isn't typical. He grew up and went to school with Poles, Hungarians, and his closest childhood friend was black. When I was a teenager I didn't think twice about going to a blues club on the south side of Chicago (3-4 of us kids were the only whites there) but I heard scarier stories about "Yankees" to had car trouble in small towns in the south on the way to Florida.

My dad and I still prefer to have a beer at a few bars where the patrons are more defined by class than color. But I'm not naive because I've been a spy in the house of prejudice. I know how people speak about Jews when they think it's safe & then back up when I offer, "Really? Did you know my dad's is....?" Yes, I'm certain there will be a racist competent and it will rear its head and I also stand on my earlier post as I do know that whites will vote for Barack but depending on who they speak to they won't admit it.

In the end we may find out that it was a more unspeakable to question McCain's age and only to find out more people regarded that was a greater factor than race. That is, if people think McCain is "too old" that will be harder to admit and they will act upon that in the voting booth before they judge Barack on his race. Nope, McCain hasn't been vetted because that subject is less polite to discuss than race. In that regard I suspect Republicans are less concerned about either judgment being based on prejudice but hope McCain doesn't provide proof that he's beyond his prime for the office. the better question may be: Between now and November which candidate has the potential to behave in a way that confirms a prejudice which isn't being admitted before someone enters the voting booth?

"I will repeat what I have posted here umpteen times.  If Colin Powell were running, racism would be uttered much, much less as an issue."

And I would say again, I am not at all certain how a Republican primary with Powell in the race might have played out.  You may think it a foregone conclusion that race wouldn't have surfaced as an election tool, Chan, but I beg to differ on that.

Also, although t agree with michael that age may be the unspoken question in people's minds about John McCain, the query hanging over age is more directly related to capability, responsibility, and the like issues directly related to the pressures of the job, while the query of the "not fully comprehended past" (as Chan delicately puts it) is related to the psychic romance of the presidency -- the kind of assumptions about America that lead to X being seen as a legitimate potential occupant of the Oval Office while Y is discounted.

If X in the 20th century has meant "middle-aged white male with Anglo-Protestant (or, at a stretch, Dutch or Irish-Catholic) name," then one way of reading events is that Obama is now showing that a much wider range for X will become the norm.

And, strictly speaking, that's also been the case with Romney, Guiliani, and Clinton.  Obama has just done it more effectively and (with the possible limited exception of Romney) on a steeper gradient.

"The unspoken assumption here is that a vote not for Obama is somehow a vote for racism."

Hogwash.  No one here has said or even implied any such thing.  This discussion presupposes merely that there is some proportion of the electorate, however small, who might otherwise be inclined to vote for the Democratic candidate but won't because of Obama's ethnic affiliation.  For those such as yourself, Chan, who would NOT be inclined otherwise to vote for the Democratic candidate, their choice of McCain over Obama gives no information as to whether or not they harbor racially prejudiced attitudes, and I happily grant that most do not.  Like you, I'm confident that most McCain voters would vote for Colin Powell over the white Democratic candidate of your choice.

ChanRobt, your defensiveness is cute, but unwarranted.

"The unspoken assumption here is that a vote not for Obama is somehow a vote for racism."

The unspoken assumption here is actually that participants of this conversation are knowledgable regarding the Bradley-Effect.

"If Colin Powell were running, racism would be uttered much, much less as an issue."

First, you actually mean if Colin Powell were to be the presumptive nominee; second, how many legitimate black presidential candidates have run in the Republican primary? I agree with your postulation, but I think you are putting the cart before the horse. Lets revisit this when the Republicans start fronting viable minority candidates in their presidential primaries, huh?

As for the rest of your post, I didn't agree with much of it the first time I heard Faux News try to foist the arguments, and you've made no progress in convincing me there is merit behind those arguments.