Herman Cain explains in a video from his presidential campaign that he "left that Democrat plantation a long time ago--and I ain't going back!" Cain is not well known, but the Republican primary voters who do know him like him a lot. Gallup found he's well ahead of the rest of the GOP 2012 pack in his positive intensity score, which is the percentage of people who have strongly favorable feelings about him minus the percentage who have strongly unfavorable feelings. The Tea Party loves him, which is interesting, given that another recent Tea Party favorite was Donald Trump. It's been just over a month since Trump's birther campaign, with its troubling racial undertones, compelled President Obama to release his long-form birth certificate. Trump immediately moved on to demanding Obama's college transcripts, implying he had benefited from affirmative action.

So it's notable that in his new video, Cain addresses race directly, saying, "To all of those people who say that the Tea Party is a racist organization, eat your words." The evidence? Herman Cain: while a countryish guitar-strummer sings about "the Cain train," the Republican candidate explains, "My great, great grandparents were slaves, and now I’m running for President of the United States of America. Is this a great country, or what?" One woman in the video says yes, the Tea Party is "about color... red, white, and blue." Cain, who grew up in Jim Crow-era Atlanta, is referred to as a "son of the South."

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Elspeth Reeve