Today's Philadelphia Inquirer ran a report by Stephanie Simon of the LA Times about Ward Connerly's national campaign against affirmative action.

DENVER - Intent on dismantling affirmative action, activists in five states have launched a coordinated drive to cut off tax dollars for programs that offer preferential treatment based on race or gender.

The campaign aims to put affirmative-action bans on the November ballots in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The effort is being organized by California consultant Ward Connerly, who has successfully promoted similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington.

Supporters of affirmative action say the initiatives will be difficult to block, given that Connerly has a proven ability to raise funds and persuade voters, even in more liberal states.

"They've targeted states where there's a white majority electorate and a vocal, if small, extreme anti-immigrant right wing," said Shanta Driver, cochairwoman and national spokeswoman of By Any Means Necessary, a coalition that defends affirmative action. In such states, she said, "it's extremely difficult for us to win."

Connerly's campaign - which he has called "Super Tuesday for Equality" - also could get a boost if the presidential ballot includes a black person or a woman. That would help him make the case, he said, that the playing field is level and minorities no longer need a hand up.

[Emphasis added.]

...a decades-long campaign of enforced political correctness by an alliance of white liberals and the black civil rights establishment intended to delegitimize and marginalize as racist any criticism of their post-civil-rights-era agenda.

Anyone who has ever made a principled argument against affirmative action, only to be accused of racism, knows exactly how these tactics work.

Not too many people realize it (or if they do they're not willing to admit it), but the biggest threat right now to affirmative action -- and the fraudulent establishment that goes with it -- is Barack Obama. Ward Connerly understands this phenomenon inside and out.

Affirmative action is part and parcel of the phony leftist narrative and the house of race cards on which the modern Democratic Party is built. Regardless of what position he takes on the issue (and I'm sure he's for it), Obama's very ethos undercuts the racist assumption that black people need help in order to succeed, and that only the condescending white liberal baby boomers can give it to them.

So it's yet another reason that Obama threatens the narrative. I think the left understands what Ward Connerly understands, and they're wising up to the Obama threat.

(Even if they don't dare admit it. What? You expect them to admit they think Obama is an aberration? A man who's "not really black" and who raises false hopes? Fat chance.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: If McCain were to win the nomination and could reach across party lines to tap Obama as a running mate once the dust settles, I think Hillary would really be screwed. But that's just ideological utopian treason -- the sort of thing that can only find voice in the science fiction novels I don't read.

Besides, who says that thoughts about defeating Hillary constitute utopian thinking?