I’ve been hearing a few people complain that the media and McCain and Bush have focussed too much on the fact that Obama is black. I have to say, it remains to be seen whether the election of the man Obama is a great thing, but the election of a black man to the presidency is, I think, hugely inspiring.

The first candidate I ever supported based on an independent decision, was Shirley Chisolm, the black congresswoman who ran for president in 1972. I was nine, but I had made a lot of progress in my own head. Only a few years earlier I had asked my mother if the new and first black family moving in on our block was going to burn down the neighborhood because, at four years old, all I knew about black people was what I saw on the news during the Newark riots. She assured me “They’re just like us” and all subsequent encounters and friendships bore that out, so I took this to be conventional wisdom that every adult knew.

Though it wasn’t important to me in 1972 as a nine year-old to have a black female president per se, I did very much want to live in a country where people wouldn’t pay much attention to race and thought that if Shirley Chisolm could get elected, that “visible evidence” of progress would fuel much more progress. My nine-year old mind didn’t see how premature that wish was. This was the election where George Wallace, running on a blatantly racist and segregationist platform, took 42% of the vote in Florida’s Democratic primary.

So I think about Obama’s race a lot and see it as a watershed moment. I’m still registering it. In some weird way it’s like the visible evidence that maybe we’ve arrived, in this one respect, at the America I was hoping for when I was nine.

Still a long way to go, but a journey of thousand miles begins with a single step and this was one hell of a step.

Bill created by Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated

This is completely beyond belief. A California Republican group made up a fake $10 bill with Obama’s image on it, surrounded by fried chicken, watermelon, and ribs. I’ve never been surprised by the latent racism in the Republican party. What blows me away is that the woman who’s responsible could say:

said she had no racist intent. “I never connected,” she told the newspaper. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.

I think I might just puke.

According to the Press Enterprise article this image is being circulated in emails in Republican circles. This comes on the heels of another local Republican party affiliate circulating an image of Obama in a turban advocating waterboarding Obama.

Why is the Republican party still so hateful? Why is it still so redneck? Is there any hope for it?

Well, the second presidential debate was a dismal affair. It was short on inspiration, long on tit for tat, and, as usual, long on stretching the truth. It’s always worth it to head over to FactCheck.org to get the skinny on what the candidates lied about misstated. I think the most important misstatement belonged to McCain who said that Obama would fine small business owners who did not provide health insurance to their employees. Actually, as it turns out, the Obama plan specifically exempts small business owners.

McCain seems to want to try to scare small business out of supporting Obama. Of course, if I felt like digressing, I would point out what a collossally bad idea it is for any of us to be getting health insurance through our employers and how there is almost no system on earth that could be worse for both workers and business owners, but that’s a long discussion. In fact, the only system I can think of which would be worse is the one proposed by McCain which will add five million uninsured almost immediately though the latest analysis says that it will roughly even out with Obama’s plan by 2010 (though it will cost 2 trillion dollars for 2010 to 2019 compared to 1.17 trillion for Obama).

The lowlight of the debate was the very end. Someone sent in a great question: What do you not know and how would you learn it? This would have been a chance for Obama, who went first, to say that he doesn’t know what the future will bring but that he’s a fast study and that he would surround himself with knowledgeable people. Indeed, one can see already in the choice of vice president the difference between the two candidates. It could have given him a big boost. Instead, he blathered on mindlessly about being from a single-parent household, and rising to where he is and wanting all Americans to have opportunity in the greatest nation on earth. I felt two million Obama votes evaporate as he blithered and blathered and it’s the first time when listening to Obama I thought “What a frickin idiot.”

Had he been paired up with a great debater like Reagan, the death blow would have followed: “Well, there he goes again. Unlike senator Obama, I plan to answer your question.” Lucky for Obama, he was paired with John McCain, a man with less debating panache than John Kerry. McCain blathered out the same frickin answer as Obama and I felt two million Obama votes rematerialize and I respected both of them less than before the debate.