I could pillory the Dems for again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but if the left is to lose the GE, at least they practiced what they preach and put up two diverse candidates. And I’m not sure that this isn’t the exact right time to see if we can win based on the absolute ball of confusion that is the GOP. I really don’t know.

As for Obama, it seems to me that what’s happening inside the Democratic Party right now is analogous to a frat-boy waking up in the morning with a fat ugly chick in his bed. The bitter pill the Dems are forced to swallow is that they’ve nominated a black man in a virulently racist country in a year when a “traditional” (white, male) Democratic nominee might have skated to the White House with landslide numbers. Instead they’ve got a candidate with that most endemic and pernicious of American handicaps — skin color. I don’t know what percentage of Americans will find themselves unable to vote for Obama because he’s black (many of them will convince themselves they are voting for McCain for other reasons); but the number is bound to be obscene. Obama may end up winning the popular vote as a result of unprecedented turnout in blue states, but as Andrew Sullivan pointed out recently, he may confront an electoral college nightmare scenario (not to mention yet another voter suppression disaster) which places the big prize completely out of reach. Unfotunately, the deck may be stacked against Obama and there’s nothing he can do about it. Let’s try to be clear about what kind of country we live in and not pretend that we’re about to have a “free election.”

Otherwise, I’ll see you at the boulangerie.