Tantalus

AP/Yahoo conducted a poll which suggests that if the election is close, racism could be the deciding factor. 

...one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks—many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll...suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004—about 2.5 percentage points.

If you believe the validity of the poll, then this is bad news for Obama. And as it happens, I do believe it. I've blogged about the idea before. At the time I wasn't sure I bought it, but the poll sure seems to shore the idea up.

"Paulie" at Where Are My Keys, where I saw this first, comments: This is not good; we aren't supposed to document this.. this.. this truth... Democrats are racist. Tee-hee.  My response was "Ann Coulter?! What have you done with Paulie!" 

More in this vein can be found at Say Anything Blog, and RedState.com.

Most bloggers I Googled are a little more cautious. Read Allahpundit's careful, discompassionate analysis here. NewsBusters, which is incapable of care and discompassion, opts to call the study ITSELF racist. Hey righties, why not jump in with both feet? This PROVES that it's the Democrats who are the racists!

I think I know why.

Admitting that racism could prevent Democrats from electing Obama flies in the face of an argument that wingnut bloggers have been making for months - that there is practically no racism in America nowadays, and people just hate Obama on his own terms. In fact, they have made a major talking point out of the idea that when Obama brings it up, he's being racist. You can't paint the Democrats with with this without contradicting yourself. Not that a thing like that would stop some of 'em.

Similarly, it would be such an incredible stretch to suggest that 30% of Democrats are racists but 30% of Republicans aren't (the poll goes out its way to disabuse you of that notion) that only partisan hacks would suggest it. 

This whole thing doesn't worry me, by the way, because liberals have a self-canceling racist mechanism: liberal guilt. When the rubber hits the road, we can count on it to thwart our own worst tendencies. This is probably how Obama got the nomination in the first place. Republicans, without that mechanism, look more like racists then Democrats do, and that's why the closest they've been to having a black presidential candidate is Alan Keyes. It's not that Republicans are more racist, it's just that they're less interested in compensating for it.

(For some delicious racial ugliness, read the comments in the Breitbart article about the poll. There's an awful lot of "blacks are prejudiced against whites!" arguments. Yeah, all those black people think the same way - they're a bunch of racists. )