I can't seem to find a good link, but yesterday I was in the car and forced to listen to NPR, and they had a pollster on who talked about the Harold Ford loss in TN and the white vote. His point was that while in the polls, many white voters said they would vote for Ford or a black candidate in general, the election proved otherwise, and Harold's race was a major factor in his loss. I think it's important to realize that race is still an important consideration in elections, and that it will be the biggest negative factor for Obama.

To me, it's a pretty obvious thing to say that there is still wide, deep racism in this country. The kerfluffle over the "call me, Harold" ad didn't shock me, so much as it depressed me. The sad fact is that many Americans still see something wrong with "race mixing" and still have a problem with the idea that a Black man could be In Charge- of anything, let alone the country. And frankly, I can't think of anything that would motivate the knuckledragger infrequent voter more than a "well spoken," good looking, popular with white women candidate like Obama. The NPR pollster also mentioned that Obama's wife is worried about assassination attempts during the campaign, and I think she should be. I don't know what would happen if Obama were assissinated, but I do think that there are plenty of crazies out there who are willing to give it a try.

I want to be wrong here, I really do. But when one looks at the actual number of national or even state-level Black, Latin and Asian politicians (ha ha, how many First Nations officials are there? As if...) one is forced to realize that until we have no more majority race in this country, we're likely to have a very pale leadership class. I've been against Obama's candidacy at this time for many reasons; his position on religion and public life, his inexperience, his centrism and wishy washy articulation of issues I care about, his willingness to buy into many DLC positions and general disinterest in true progressive values. But if there is one reason above all others I oppose his candidacy, it's because I believe 2008 is the Democrats' race to lose, and I can't think of a better way to do so than by selecting a Black man for the office of President. I hope that progressives and liberals who think Obama is "great choice" will remember that in many ways, Ford had the same things "going for him," and he didn't win. TN is very close in racial statistics to the whole of the nation, and the numbers there don't suggest that now is the time for our first Black President. Which sucks, but is still probably true.