Obama Comments Racist, Poll Finds

As I've noted a couple of times (here and here), Barack Obama's likely to face a backlash should he continue to make allegations of racism against John McCain throughout the campaign.

This morning's release of new polling data support this conclusion.

For example, Gallup finds the race essentially tied, with Obama up 45-to-44 percent over McCain; and Rasmussen's daily tracking poll finds Obama up 44-to-43 percent.

Even more significant is Rasmussen's survey on last week's race controversy. It turns out that less than one-in-four respondents thought the McCain campaign's "Celeb" ad buy was racist, whereas a clear majority sees Obama's "dollar-bill" comment that way:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

Not only has Obama been discredited by this data, but the findings point to a much larger challenge for his campaign through November: His Democratic supporters have had a field day portraying the GOP as "neck drooling, knuckledragging, moron[s]" who are engaged in a "nefarious" plot to plant "subconscious (or conscious) biases and evoke a particular visceral reaction," and they're just warming up.

If Barack Obama's skills as a transcendental post-partisan candidate are real, you'd think he might demonstrate a little more sway over his radical backers (who see hooded night-riders galloping around every move the GOP makes).