Some people — both Republican and Democrat — have been expecting that the reluctance of white voters to vote for a black man might be a headwind against Barack Obama. But the Politico’s Ben Smith finds evidence that Bush fatigue and GOP “brand damage” may be so severe as to negate the so-called Bradley Effect:

Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that there’s a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man. “I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently. One Obama volunteer told Politico after canvassing the working-class white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are … undecided. They would call him a [racial epithet] and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”

The most bizarre anecdote I’ve heard in this regard — so bizarre that I suspect it’s an urban legend — was told by pro-Obama blogger Sean Quinn:

So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n—–!” Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n—–.”

Like I said, that may be apocryphal, but there is no doubt that many voters now feel toward the Republican Party such a deep rage as to overcome all other considerations.