Sen. Obama goes negative

The AP reports from Springfield, Mo:

"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."

Note that he is not talking about anything Sen. McCain has actually said or done. Instead, he is making a prediction about what Sen. McCain is "going to try." This way he thinks that he can, without any evidence, call McCain a racist and get away with it.

UPDATE: After initially denying that he was calling Sen. McCain a racist, his staff later admitted that that was what he meant.

UPDATE II: Sen. Obama admits his comment was about race and then denies it all within one paragraph.