playing the race card

Clearly, the McCain campaign is getting a little desperate, if that wasn't obvious enough by the recent slew of negative attack ads: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/mccain-campaign-says-obama-is-playing-the-race-card/index.html?hp
Personally, while I admire his moral uprightness or whatever you want to call it, I think it's time Obama started getting a little dirtier, too. I mean, most people are pretty stupid and have trouble discerning fact from fiction, so the fact remains that smear campaigns work pretty well on the masses. But that's neither here nor there. What struck me about this article was this:
"The McCain campaign’s decision to make the charge now that Mr. Obama was playing the 'race card' comes as it has adopted a far more aggressive, negative posture towards Mr. Obama in recent days, trying to tar him as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency with a series of statements by Mr. McCain and a series of negative ads – some of which have been condemned as misleading."

Think they meant to use that word?