Who played the race card?

This weekend I saw clips of both Obama and McCain saying this will be a positive, issue-oriented campaign. These were presented ironically, as McCain's camp put out an ad comparing Obama's celebrity status to Paris Hilton, and then there's Obama insinuating McCain's camp was going to be race-baiting.

This is how I saw the Obama timeline go:
1. Hillary's team plays race card, loses.
2. Obama says McCain's side will say "He has a funny name,a nd he doesn't look like the presidents on the dollar bill." What could that mean besides race? His ears?
3. McCain's team overstates the race-card play.
4. The New York Times slams McCain for daring to insinuate that Obama is insinuating that McCain is insinuating the race card.

I caught part of an interview with Orson Scott Card, sci-fi author, LDS, Democrat. He said it would be a mistake for McCain to pick Mitt Romney as his VP, and it's solely due to his religion. Romney might help out in states like Nevada and Michigan, but as Mike Huckabee exposed, there's still some serious anti-LDS sentiments out there amongst evangelicals, and Southern evangicals who are on the fence about sitting on their hands this election just might hop off the fence for hand-sitting with the choice of Romney. Now with polls showing we're going to have record turn-out for African-Americans, and many who've stayed home in the South plan to come up now, McCain just might lose a Southern state or two, and all polls show that for McCain to win, he'll need every Southern state.

Now the vast majority of voters don't care (how many even know that McCain's Baptist?), but it's a game of numbers. If you win this state but lose that state, with a net loss of three electoral votes, it's something they need to consider.