NPR:

For some voters, suggestions that some of the opposition to Obama and his policies is more than just honest disagreement — and is indeed racially based — could help do the trick.

The Democrats’ use of voting rights strikes the same chord. Voting rights and race have been so inextricably linked in the nation’s history, and in the African-American experience, that Obama can send a resonant message to many minority voters without ever explicitly mentioning race.

He did exactly that when he spoke to the same Sharpton group as Holder, a few days after the attorney general.

Obama portrayed Republican voter ID efforts as attempts to undo civil and voting rights protections enacted during the Johnson administration — protections won at the price of blood.

That those Johnson-era laws were needed to counter racist laws and practices that prevented blacks from voting, especially in the South, could go unsaid before an audience well-steeped in that racial history.