Will race be the factor that keeps Obama from the White House?

Race is arguably the biggest issue in this election, and it's one that nobody's talking about.

The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain couldn't be more well-defined. Obama wants to change Washington. McCain is a part of Washington and a part of the Bush legacy. Yet the polls remain close. Doesn't make sense…unless it's race.

Time magazine's Michael Grunwald says race is the elephant in the room. He says Barack Obama needs to tread lightly as he fights back against the McCain-Palin campaign attacks.

[John K. Matyi] As for Time magazine's Michael Grunwald, he wrote:

"This is a blue-collar town," Manheim's coach said in his introduction of McCain. "We don't have a lot of flashy athletes. We don't come out with a lot of flash." But the coach explained that his team works hard, plays with discipline and comes through in the end. "A lot like John McCain," he said.

If you're familiar with the code words of the sports world, you've probably already guessed that Manheim's players had something else in common with McCain: they were white. On the other hand, athletes who are described as "flashy" almost invariably have something in common with Barack Obama. I'm not saying the coach was trying to inject race into his discussion of flashiness. I'm saying that sometimes we talk about race even when we're not talking about race — in presidential politics as well as sports. Sports announcers have at least made an effort to shed their stereotypes; they occasionally describe black players as "scrappy" or "blue collar," adjectives that used to be reserved for whites. But for political pundits, "working class" or "blue collar" or even "small town" voters still means white; blacks have their own category.

I'm not a big "sports" fan, but I'm trying to remember when (if ever) I have heard anyone (including sport announcers) refer to a player as either "flashy," "scrappy," or "blue collar." The fact that these terms are racial in nature, or some kind of subliminal message is really news to me. But then I turned 62 this year and I am sometimes "Out of Touch, " and I'm "too old to be a commercial airline pilot or even a judge in some states". And I worry that I may not have "the stamina" to finish this editorial. My biggest problem, however, is that I have 'the policies of yesterday' so no one will want to read this anyway.

Both Jack Cafferty and Michael Grunwald are correct, "Race is the elephant in the room of the 2008 campaign." The problem is that it is the left-wing elite MSM (in their liberal biased bubble) that are the elephant handlers, not the American people. They also seem to be the Old Age handlers too.