Liking and hating Obama.

Here are 2 articles on the front page of washingtonpost.com right now:

1. "Romney’s problem? Americans don’t like him as much as Obama, polls say."

2. "What drives the Obama doubters and haters?"

There's an inane amount of talk about liking/hating Obama. What's going on? Is it a struggle over race at some deep psychic level? Is it the media talking about race without talking about race?

More context, from the second article:

What drives [the haters]? Some of it can be attributed to the give-and-take of today’s harsh ideological divide. Some of it can be explained by the way misinformation spreads virally to millions of like-minded people, reinforcing preconceptions. And some of it, I believe, arises out of fears of demographic changes in this country, and out of racism.

It's no accident that the last word of the article is "racism." If you read that paragraph quickly, the impression left in your mind — or maybe not your mind but many minds — is: "What drives [the haters]... blah blah blah blah ... racism!

Race isn't mentioned in the first article, but there's talk of that "it's okay" ad:

Sounding a bit like a sympathetic psychotherapist, a recent Republican National Committee ad acknowledged Americans’ affection for Obama and offered them permission to move on.

“He tried. You tried,” the announcer said. “It’s okay to make a change.”

Is the "it's okay" message massaging our racial sensitivities?