Am I being "overly sensitive" ...?
This is an except from an article at TPM, entailed: Explaining The Crazy: What All The Chaotic Politics News Really Means.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/obama-romney-moms-sluts-dogs-women-voters.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
They’re both signaling different things to Republicans’ heavily white, religious, rural base — and even to some Democrats. The Obama camp’s message is that Romney’s not one of you. The Romney camp message is that Obama’s not one of us.
From the above, one can draw two conclusions: First, race plays/will play a far greater role in this race than anyone will admit; and secondly, the Obama campaign considers a segment of the Democratic party to be as racialized as the gop.
Now some may was to argue that these positions are not about race; but in order to argue that, one would must ignore the sentence construction. The article provides a description of the both campaigns' target audience langauge as "heavily white, religious, (and) rural".
Then follows the campaigns' messages to those audiences in exclusive/inclusive language. This must be read that the Democrats see themselves outside of the target audience grouping, i.e., not white, not rural and not christian; President Obama is not white, is not rural; but he is christian. On the other hand, the Romney camp see themselves as a part of the target group, i.e., white, christian and rural. While Romney satisfies one of these traits - white, he Romney is also not rural; but he actually represents an anti-criterion - he is NOT Christian (in the view of "rural" christians).
Now in terms of "get out to vote" characteristics, religion trumps rural and "rural" is almost synonymous with white; therefore, in order for this inclusive/exclusive langauge to make sense, the campaigns (or at least the OP writer) must consider the racial component to be a primary factor.
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