Racists: Obsolete

In an interesting political discussion with my family last night, my parents hypothesized that should Barack Obama become the Democratic nominee he would lose to John McCain because a large swath of Americans are still unwilling to vote for a black man as president. They may be right, but the thing is, a large swath of Americans don't have to.

There's an excellent analysis of why that is here (and it really is worth the read), but if you're in a hurry, what it boils down to is this: more people in more states have voted for Obama than any other candidate running and more than all of the Republican candidates combined. Furthermore Democratic turnout has trounced Republican turnout in every single contest so far, and based on mathematical regression models (same link — go read it!), this trend seems likely to repeat itself in the general election. Worthy of note is the fact that Democratic turnout was universally larger even when the Republican contest was more contentious than the Democratic contest (oh, the halcyon days of January). So sure, Kentucky won't elect Obama... but Colorado very likely will, and that's a state that John Kerry lost.

In short, Obama's November success isn't predicated on a moratorium on racism; it's predicated on attaining 270 electoral votes. Even conservative pollster Rasmussen has spent the last several months quietly reflecting the steep uphill electoral battle that McCain will face once the Democrats stop chewing on each other and start chewing on him.

And on a side note, I'd like to take a moment to personally thank George Stephanopolous for the fact that this scintillatingly newsworthy headline came across my Google feed reader this morning: Obama Wears Flag Pin to West Virginia Rally.