"Fortunately, there was no one on the bottom of the deck at the time," Chief Sykes said.
But so it was then for Cochran, even when he was accused of "playing the race card from the bottom of the deck".
At the time, Mr. McCain's manager, Rick Davis, charged that Mr. Obama had "played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck".
There is no doubt that Trump played the race card, dealing from the bottom of the deck most often when it came to Mexican immigrants.
Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager fired back that Obama had "played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck".
He allowed as how "no place in the world offers a better prospect for a career to an ambitious young fellow who can deal from the bottom of the deck and is handy with a gun" than New York did.
Those who share her view were especially outraged at Robert Shapiro's famous post-trial rebuke to Cochran — for not only playing the race card but dealing it "from the bottom of the deck".
With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign's operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.
When Senator John McCain's camp replied by accusing him of playing the race card from the bottom of the deck, the Obama campaign seemed at least momentarily off balance.
The furor started on Thursday when Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's campaign manager, said, "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck".
The implication, there, is that Mormonism is a weak point to be exploited — a card that one would only expect the Obama team to play from the bottom of the deck.
