We voters keep getting reminders that the Republicans are going to "play the race card." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton regularly warned us of such nefarious GOP plans, often while helpfully providing an example of the ugly stereotypes or cultural references available for use.

And although Sen. Barack Obama's campaign chastised Mrs. Clinton last August for being obsessed "with what she calls the Republican attack machine," Mr. Obama himself has regularly invoked the soon-coming onslaught.

At a fund raiser in June, Mr. Obama predicted, "They're going to try to make you afraid of me: 'He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. ... Oh, and did I mention he's black?'"

Last week, Mr. Obama again warned of the GOP's impending insidious attack: "The only strategy they've got in this election is to try to scare you about me -- 'He doesn't look like all the presidents on the dollar bills.'" All those presidents, of course, being white.

But Sen. John McCain, his allies and the Republican Party as a whole -- despite its disarray and beleaguered mood -- have acted in unity thus far in refusing to utter the words that the Democrats keep trying to shove into their mouths.

So what's going on here? Something pretty despicable, actually. By constantly (and hopefully) claiming the Republicans will play "the race card," the Democrats are playing "the racist card."

It's absolutely necessary to distinguish between the two in this election cycle -- thanks entirely, up until now, to Democratic leaders' regular, and so-far false, accusations. Their strategy is essentially a prolonged smear tactic, propagating the Democrats' historically silly claim to be the party of racial equality.

And it refutes Mr. Obama's earlier, constant promises to transcend the "old stuff [that] just divides us."

Both parties have plenty to be ashamed of in their racial histories, though you wouldn't know it from the popular narrative. Democratic operatives were the first to "play the race card," spreading (possibly true) rumors back in 1920 that Republican candidate Warren G. Harding had black ancestors. He won anyway.

The popular narrative on race, dispensed by baby-boomer-dominated media, begins conveniently in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson, until very recently a committed segregationist, signed the Civil Rights Act. The other half of the narrative's centerpiece is Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," which shamefully exploited white segregationists' fears even as an aggressive federal government alarmed many pro-civil rights conservatives.

This highly selective and unhistorical narrative obviously favors one party over the other and prevents the discussion of substantive issues that both candidates say they want. So if Mr. Obama is going to transcend the "old stuff" that just divides us, maybe he should start by declining to imply that his partisan opponents are racists just waiting to pounce.

Besides the general consensus that Mr. McCain is a man of character who will not play the race card, he doesn't have to. He can play the Messiah card, the inexperience card and the leftist card.

He played all three, in fact, last week. His campaign's spoof of Mr. Obama's well-cultivated image as "The One" was spot-on. Its tone only falters in its final sentence, as it raises the issue of inexperience and asks, "But is he ready to lead?"

And Mr. McCain continued to push his advantage on energy policy -- the most high-profile issue by which he can display the philosophical distance between his moderate positions and Mr. Obama's far-left voting record. (Americans for Democratic Action gives him 100 percent, to Sen. Ted Kennedy's 95.)

Mr. Obama can play the hand he's been dealt: Mr. McCain's age, his pro-Iraq War position and a stumbling economy. But racism?

When Mr. McCain's campaign accused his opponent of injecting racism into the contest with his "presidents on the dollar bills" remark, Mr. Obama at first scoffed at the suggestion.

But by Friday, chief strategist David Axelrod said his boss was in fact guilty as charged, acknowledging on "Good Morning America" that Mr. Obama's dollar-bill remark referred in part to his race. At a Saturday news conference in Florida, the candidate said the same thing himself, repeating the defense offered by Mr. Axelrod: the remark's main point was that "I don't come out of central casting when it comes to presidential races." Oddly, he told reporters, "None of you thought I was making a racially incendiary remark, or playing the race card." (The Associated Press did not report how the press corps responded to his assumption of their collective absolution.)

Though the Republicans have won this round, it would be good for the whole country if both candidates live up to their rhetoric -- Mr. McCain by balancing satire and a clear conscience in his ads, Mr. Obama by refraining from implying that his opponents are racists without evidence to support the charge.