The Race In Missouri May Come Down To Race

Nobody's surprised that race is an issue in Missouri for Barack Obama, least of all Missouri Democrats.

Four years ago, one yard in a working-class Kansas City suburb sported a "Kerry" sign bigger than a bed mattress.

But this season there's no "Obama" sign there of any size, not even throw-pillow dimension.

"It's the 'B-L-A-C-K' issue," a neighbor explained. "You hear it everywhere."

But it hardly has to be spelled out for most of us that race has been injected into presidential politics in unprecedented ways.

Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, is rewriting the history of an America shackled since inception by racial divide.

Missouri has been at the crux of that old story and is at its crux now.

A swing state, a bellwether, it looks like a jump ball once again. But could Obama, positioning himself as a post-racial candidate, be pulled down by racism there?

No one knows, but many are wondering.

Social trends, past elections, black enthusiasm and polls, polls, polls offer some clues, but no amount of analytical scrubbing can make transparent a voter's bias, said polling expert Scott Keeter.

"The election itself is the checkup."

An Obama loss Nov. 4 in deep red Kansas will pass without much mention. But in pink-trending Missouri, it promises to attract national scrutiny, especially if white Democrats do well in other statewide races.

Should he lose, said Brad Stokes, a union official in Springfield who is white, "it would be a shame to tell our kids the reason was that race was part of it. And for some of our members, it may be."

Missouri has picked the President correctly in 25 of the last 26 elections, the only mistake in that time was going for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. But there's an honest problem for Obama in this state and many others if 5-6% of voters won't vote for him because he's black.