The Race Card

Joe Klein thinks it's high time President Obama played the race card.

First, Obama is not above playing it.  Two instances that immediately spring to mind, and I'm sure there are more, are when, early in his administration, he came to the defense of his friend Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates when Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct outside his own home.  More recently are his comments in the wake of the the shooting death of young Trayvon Martin.

However, it's true, Obama usually eschews it.  But why?

Because he knows that if he plays the race card too overtly and too often it will make for a political disaster.  Had he played it in 2008, he would never have been nominated by his party, much less elected.  While liberals swim in this swamp, most other Americans still find, thank God, it distasteful in the very least. 

And what was true in 2008 is still true in 2012.  The fact that Klein would so publicly encourage the president in this way should alone tell you how desperate they are becoming.