extraordinary about obama's so-called race speech is the fact that it happened at all. there was no precedent. i mean, yes, black people had run for president before, but at this stage in the game, there wasn't a clearly marked road that said, this is how this kind of black person deals with people trying to disparage him and take him down in the name of race. >> throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the american people were for this message of unity. despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. >> obama was forced to give a speech on race, and he was