White Democrats are racist! Their hate has cost Obama at least 6 percent of his votes! He's going to lose! That was the gist of an Associated Press story about a new poll that suggests 1/3 of Democrats don't like blacks too much. The AP's reporter behind the story, Ron Fournier, has, in the past, been accused all over the Internet and on MSNBC of being more or less in the can for John McCain, and the story on this study, which some have described as a racism push poll, has added flames to that fire. Now, surely there are plenty of Democrats who won't vote for Obama because they don't like blacks (or Muslims, even if he's not one) — we've been over this not-very-complicated idea more than once — but with Barack Obama ahead in the polls and the Bradley Effect basically disproven in primaries, it's not so much a lost cause as a major obstacle to overcome. And he's clearly overcoming it, at least for now. As many racists as there are out there, Barack Obama wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where he is without an extremely large number of white people voting for him.

CONTINUED »