If it wasn't for his brother Philip Butterfield's all out assault on Bermuda Union of Teachers general secretary Mike Charles, then Dr. Ewart Brown's comments on President-elect Barack Obama and white voting patterns might well have been the single most dominant story of the week.

Last Friday in the House of Assembly, Dr. Brown claimed that many UBP MPs were jumping on the Barack Obama bandwagon, the inference being that they did not really support the President-Elect.

Saying that the majority of white Bermudians traditionally support the United Bermuda Party, Dr. Brown posited that "if you looked at the voting patterns in Bermuda, which all vote in lines, if whites in Bermuda were to vote in the US using the same lines, they would have voted for the other man."

And he went on to question what President-Elect Obama's experience would have been in the UBP if was a member of that party, apparently a reference to the problems that former UBP MP Jamahl Simmons, now an aide to the Premier, and possibly others say they have experienced.

Dr. Brown no doubt will claim that he was not saying white Bermudians would not vote for Obama if they could, only that if they voted en bloc, as the PLP believes they do in Bermuda, then they would inevitably vote for someone other than a black man.

Letting stand for now the assumption that white voters act as some kind of monolith, Dr. Brown seems to miss the point about both President-elect Obama and about his own party, and indeed, his own language over the years.

President-elect Obama presents a new way of talking about race. Because he is a deep thinker and perhaps because he comes from a multi-racial background, he has been able to frame the debate in a way that recognised the insecurities of both blacks and whites while still pointing to a way forward where racial differences can be eradicated.

The PLP, by contrast, has never achieved this, certainly not under Dr. Brown's leadership. The Big Conversation's point was to make people, presumably whites, uncomfortable, then to come up with solutions. Regardless of whether or not whites need to acknowledge the past, this was a deliberately destructive approach to the issue, as opposed to President-elect Obama's, which is fiercely constructive.

Nor does Dr. Brown seem to understand that when he and his candidates talk about how an election in favour of the UBP would put blacks back on the plantation, or back in chains, or when Marc Bean in the General Election claimed, "if they have the opportunity they (the UBP) will lock all of us up. It's true", then the code is clear. The UBP is white. The PLP is black. "They" will do unmentionable things to "us", including a return to slavery.

And when these comments are apparently accepted, at least insofar as they are not condemned in any way, then it is surely no surprise that the majority of whites are reluctant to cast a vote for the PLP.

Instead, though, the PLP maintains the fiction that the only reason whites are not voting for the PLP in any real numbers must be because of their inherent racism.

As long as Dr. Brown and others persist with a political strategy that hinges on race and race alone, they will not understand why blacks and whites, and especially younger people who have never known formal segregation, are excited by President-elect Obama's message.

And until Dr. Brown understands that insulting the intelligence of voters, whether they are black or white, male or female, young or old, is a sure way of making sure they will never vote for him, Bermuda will continue on its sad and divided path.