Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, deficits in clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the moment, the two appear to be tied. What gives?

Could it be that about half of the voters actually believe that McCain will serve them better as president than Obama? Could it be that about half of the voters aren’t impressed with pure political acumen and tend to look past campaign rhetoric? Could it be that about half of the voters place more weight on what a candidate has shown himself to be than on what he promises to be? Could it be that about half of the voters chafe at the government holding their hand and can’t face the prospect of it holding both their hands? Could it be that about half of the voters place more value on substance than charisma? Could it be that about half of the voters feel that Obama is better suited to playing the president in a movie than actually running the country? Could it be that about half of the voters don’t have a problem voting for a black candidate but don’t want to vote for this black candidate? I could go on and on.

“If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama’s missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks or the concern that he may be too handsome, brilliant and cool to be elected. But let’s be honest: the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He lags with them for a simple reason: the color of his skin.”

It doesn’t matter to Weisberg that in recent history white Democrats have trailed badly among older white voters. He just wants to attribute it this time to the Democrat having dark skin. To me Obama’s appearance suggests gawky more than handsome and I haven’t seen anything from him that I would call brilliant except his ability to sell himself. I’ll accept cool.

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world’s judgment will be severe and inescapable: the United States had its day, but in the end couldn’t put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Wow! Weisberg’s absurd view is that this race for president hinges wholly on race. (The race hinges on race.) Not just the race but the world’s judgement. Actually, he desperately wants to make it about race. He wants us to vote for Obama because he’s black and then at his inauguration we can all stand and cheer with pride as he struggles to the podium carrying his great handicap with dignity. And then we can stand back and bask in the glow of bliss, harmony and world approval.

That will last about a week before the approving countries, special interests and victim classes line up at the White House with their demands — and our country hastens its decline into socialism.

Weisberg is wrong in another sense. Electing Obama won’t end racism in America. Racism will always be with us as long as people like him, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright are around to keep it stoked.

People seem to forget that Obama is as much white as he is black. It probably won’t make Weisberg feel any better about staving off our “nation’s historical decline” but I’m voting against the white half.

In one of Obama’s books he writes about the time he spent living with his white grandparents. At one point his grandfather was unemployed and his grandmother was working at a bank. She normally rode the bus to work but one morning asked her husband to drive her to work because a man had accosted her at the bus stop the previous morning. He refused and later told Obama that the reason his grandmother is afraid of the man is because he is black. Obama seemed to favor his lazy, unemployed grandfather in this incident over his grandmother who just wanted to get to work safely. The possibility that his grandmother would have been just as frightened by a white man behaving in the same way seems to have escaped Obama.

If this country is as racist as Obama and his pastor think it is how did he get to where he is from such humble beginnings?

Obama’s wife was an Ivy League educated, successful attorney before they met. How did she achieve that if this country is so racist?

Brian Williams’ program tonight follows a documentary called “Meeting David Wilson.” It is about a black man, David Wilson, who looked up the descendants of his ancestors’ slave masters and found one named David Wilson. I don’t know the complete message of his documentary yet but I can still ask: If this country is so racist how can the black David Wilson get his film on a nationwide cable television program?

If this country is so racist how did General Colin Powell become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State? If this country is so racist how did Condoleezza Rice rise from the Birmingham of the 1960s to become Secretary of State? If this country is so racist how did Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder and Star Parker become very successful syndicated columnists? If this country is so racist how did hundreds of other blacks become superstars in entertainment, athletics, politics, communications, etc?

Perhaps a better question is: Are Obama and some other blacks showing a little racism themselves? Do they see themselves as so special that they can’t grasp the possibility that other blacks are capable of succeeding without special government assistance?

I agree that they might need protection now that Jesse and Al have stirred up the hornet’s nest (although one family member said she didn’t feel threatened). No reasonably intelligent adult believes that Al and Jesse didn’t realize beforehand that their over-the-top actions would incite the opposing hate groups. It is exactly what they wanted. And, yes, I consider Jackson’s and Sharpton’s organizations hate groups.

What is unfortunate about this whole thing is the system appeared to be working. Yes, the original charges — of attempted murder — against the black kids seems a bit severe. But only one kid has been tried so far. He was convicted of aggravated second degree battery, not attempted murder. And his conviction has been overturned by a state appeals court. Four of the other kids charges were reduced when they were arraigned several months ago. The sixth kid was booked as a juvenile and his charges are sealed.

I can think of no good reason that Jackson and Sharpton needed to do more than provide good legal representation for the kids and moral and financial support for their families. Holding a press conference in Jena with the family members standing behind them might have been a reasonable thing to do. But bringing in thousands of demonstrators to overwhelm a tiny town was not the kind of help they needed.

Clearly, obtaining justice for the Jena-Six was not Jackson’s and Sharpton’s primary objective.

CBS News has a report on the march planned for today in Jena, Louisianna:

With as many as 50,000 demonstrators expected here by the busload from across the country, businesses, schools, even government office buildings in this small, central Louisiana town will remain closed all day, reported (CBS News Correspondent Byron) Pitts.

The Reverend Al Sharpton helped organize the march in support of six black teenagers jailed and charged in the beating of a white classmate last December. Five are charged with attempted second-degree murder. The sixth defendant’s case is under court seal because he’s a juvenile.

Sharpton told The Early Show that the case against the six black high school students is a “raw disparity of justice.”

“We didn’t bring race in it,” Sharpton told CBS News. “Those that hung the nooses brought race in it.”

The nooses that Sharpton refers to were hung in a tree at the high school by three white students months before the beating. The students were briefly suspended from school.

There seems to be no evidence that the black teenagers are being treated more severely than anyone else charged with the same crime. The best I can tell, Sharpton believes that their crimes should be excused because someone hung some nooses in a tree several months before the crimes were committed. He clearly intends more than just bringing attention to the black teenagers’ cases. Bringing 50,000 demonstrators to a town of 3,500 is meant to intimidate local and state officials. (Why the state officials are allowing this to happen is another good question.)

Sharpton’s mission is to fan the flames of racial conflict around the country to extend his wealth and power. Has he ever stood up for a black charged with a crime against another black? I don’t have to ask if he has ever stood up for a white charged with a crime against a black.

Update: I learned a little more of the circumstances of the Jena situation. It seems there was enough blame to go around, but the authorities came down harder on the black kids. I still don’t think the state should have allowed Sharpton to bring in hordes of people to cause even more trouble. I think the local officials would have eventually sorted it all out fairly. Do you believe for one minute that, say, New York would allow some white supremacist to bring in thousands of people to protest the prosecution of white kids for assaulting a black kid?

It’s amusing to me how political factions grab labels to help promote their ideologies. A few years ago big-government liberals started calling themselves ‘progressives’. Who can be against progress? Well, that should depend on what the faction is progressing toward. A faction promoting the subjugation of our people to a monarchy could be considered ‘progressive’ by those that support that goal. The big-government liberals took a generic term and tried to redefine it as if it only applies to their goals. The principal function of such labels is to disguise the goals of the factions.
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I’ve said before that I think racial preferences, such as those implemented in the name of diversity, are themselves racist — because they inherently assume that any member of a minority race is more like other members of that minority race than members of a majority race. They don’t allow for the fact that a child of a white, rural, redneck family in the South would add more diversity to an Ivy League university than a child of a black, urban lawyer from the North. George Will addressed this today in the best and most colorful way I’ve seen:

Although progressive people would never stoop to racial stereotyping, they evidently believe that any black or other minority child, however young, or from whatever social background, makes a predictable and distinctive — you might say stereotypical — contribution to “diversity.”

(Diversity) allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning — a sort of human oregano — to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority’s educational experience more flavorful.

But that is not what this post is about. It occurred to me that the Obama phenomenon is strong evidence that racism is not as prevalent in America as the race industry claims. How could he generate the interest and poll numbers that are being reported if racism is such a huge problem? Obviously large numbers of non-blacks are indicating their support for him.

I wonder if the race industry is getting concerned. Perhaps they should worry that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama getting elected President of the United States might hurt their business.

On second thought the Obama phenomenon may not say anything at all about the lack of racism in America. It might just indicate how fearful some Americans are that Hillary Clinton could become President if no dramatic alternative is produced.

From Goldberg’s column:

When the University of Michigan’s admissions policies were being reviewed by the Supreme Court, former school president Lee Bollinger explained that diversity was “as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics and of Shakespeare” because exposure to people of different hues lies at the core of the educational experience.

This is the problem I have with diversity programs: They assume that students at Yale benefit more from being exposed to a child of a black physician living in Connecticut than being exposed to a child of a white farmer living in Mississippi. In this sense diversity programs are racist. There are plenty of potential black students that are more like the majority of white Yale students than many potential white students.

If universities were really interested in building a diverse student body they would recruit students from across the country and from different socio-economic backgrounds — regardless of skin color.

Update: Jennifer Gratz, a young white woman who was denied admission as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, sued the university on the basis that the undergraduate college had unconstitutionally awarded other applicants a set number of points solely for not being white. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in her favor. OpinionJournal, in an article by John Fund, reports that:

She believes universities could look to socioeconomic factors rather than racial ones when considering applicants. Economic elements “should be taken into account, regardless of your skin color.” (emphasis mine)

Obviously she is wise beyond her years — since she thinks like me.