David Axelrod's Race Card Campaign

Townhall reports:

The allegations of Obama planting the false Maureen Down column to immunize himself from legitimate criticism didn’t simply fall out the sky. Astute political observers could easily detect David Axelrod’s fingerprints all over the illicit campaign tactic. It worked before, so why not now?

The senior partner of AKP Message & Media, David Axelrod is a leading political consultant based in Chicago, Illinois. While he is best known as a top adviser to Barack Obama, first in Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois and currently as strategist for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, he has been the power behind the throne in multiple campaigns, including Dennis Archer in Detroit, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia. While Axelrod will advise white candidates, he primarily specializes in developing campaign strategies for black candidates. His favorite, indeed primary campaign tactic, is to polarize the campaign with smear attacks, in other words, the race card. Indeed when all else fails, Axelrod resorts to the race card as his ace in the hole.

The most blatant example of Axelrod’s polarization campaign tactics was Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street’s 2003 reelection campaign. Street won his first term in 1999 in a razor-thin victory over GOP Sam Katz, despite a 4 to 1 voter registration edge. 2003 was anticipated to be rerun despite Street’s incumbency.

An article well worth reading.