Looks like the first plot to assassinate Barack Obama got short-circuited by the Denver Police yesterday. At least, it’s the first plot that got far enough along to warrant arrests and generate any news coverage. The national news media aren’t paying much attention, though I did hear Chris Matthews mention it briefly last night while waiting for Ted Kennedy’s speech. From the looks of the mug shots and the video from the local Denver station with one of the suspects, it seems more like a bunch of redneck knuckle-draggers than any Karl Rove/Manchurian Candidate sort of plot, but it doesn’t take a conspiracy to put a gun in a guy’s hand.

The assassination factor has been deliberately underplayed by the Obama campaign, though it has occasionally bubbled up in the media (including Hillary’s unfortunate comment about RFK). I’m sure it has a good deal more frequency among those compassionate Christian gun-totin’ all-American red-staters who haven’t taken kindly to a nigra running for office. After all, Saint Rush himself has put out the word that it’s okay to admit that you’re scared of black people, and spends plenty of time every day making sure his listeners know that it’s a black man trying to take them over. Race-baiting is Item Number One in the Republican Playbook this year. By mid-October, I expect that Rush will spend his entire show shouting “Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!” into the microphone every single day until the election. He’s almost at that point now.

Assuming he’s elected (which I assume he will be), Obama will have to endure this threat with a full degree more of sincere concern than his predecessors. The threat of assassination has always been real, if quite remote, for presidents, but the barely-concealed racism in our society is so likely to lose its cloak of invisibility with a black president. Quite frankly, it surprises me that we’ve gotten all the way to the conventions with only one plot getting to this point. I have to imagine that other people have shot their mouths off (pun intended) about killing him, so these guys must have been doing more than thumping their chests at the local bar.