One needs only to listen to right-wing talk radio, or view the spitting mad attendees at the rallies for McCain and Palin to see the ugly racial undercurrent and negative campaign magnetics operating on that side of the aisle. Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi recently did the Lord's work when he smacked down National Review columnist Byron York's scurrilous attempts to lay blame on the entire financial crisis on minorities who missed their mortgage payments. Larry Kudlow, who was influential in the McCain campaign's choice of Palin, as well as Laura Ingraham and -- surprise! -- Ann Coulter, are all furthering that "blame-the-minorites" argument in the bowels of right-wing talk radio and in the loucher precincts of the blogosphere. "The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable," said Taibbi on NYMag.com this week.

On WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show on the day of the debate, Taibbi said outright that he detected coded racial appeals within the McCain/Palin campaign. Taibbi cited the Franklin Raines ad as having a racial element -- wildly exaggerating the relationship between Obama and Raines -- as well as the introduction of William Ayers, co-author of Race Course Against White Supremacy, and, we cannot fail to note, the not-so-subtle attacks on "community organizers."

Taibbi recalled Reagan's "Welfare Queen" reference, as well as Atwater-Bush '92's infamous "Willie Horton" attack ad and Nixon's appeals to "law and order" as evidence that these things are not new to American politics when played at the presidential level. If Senator Obama wins, could that mean the end of these coded racial appeals which have worked so well in the past? "It just seems to me that this is the strategy that they seem to pursue because they can't focus in on anything else," said Taibbi. The Rolling Stone columnist concluded of the coded appeals, "it's gonna fail this time, and that's historic -- they may never use them again."

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