Associated Press:
  • A day after Democratic candidate Barack Obama warned that Republican rival John McCain would tell voters “he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills,” McCain’s campaign on Thursday accused Obama of playing racial politics.

    Obama “played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. He called Obama’s remarks “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

    Stumping in Missouri, Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain the GOP’s hold on the White House because they have little else to offer voters.

    “Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, ‘he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”‘