The Re-Birth of a Nation?

The Republicans a have attempted to recast the race as one between a small town (white) "Hockey Mom," and a Big City (black) radical. Obama is now in danger of appearing "disrespectful" to a white woman, and suffering all the consequences that implies.

In 1915, DW Griffith's The Brith of a Nation presented a mythistory of the origins of the Ku Klux Klan as an organization the emerged to protect the honor and virtue of white women threatened by the sexual predations of black men. The film operated according to a cultural logic that appears to be alive and well a century later. There seems to be a strong and deep current of racist sentiment that runs through this political system. This is euphemistically referred to a the "Buba Vote," but this characterization simply scapegoats poor whites and elides any analysis of what is a fundamentally racist power structure owned and operated by economic elites.

Obama should have recognized this fact and spent more time inspiring the marginalized, excluded and oppressed, and less time reassuring the wealthy and powerful. But unfortunately, if he loses, Democrats will draw the wrong lesson from the race and choose to assume that he lost because he did not move fast enough or hard enough to "the center." I don't know how much farther or faster he could have gone. In my view, that was the fatal mistake and Huffington was exactly on point. By compromising on the core principles upon which he had built his brand name, he undermined the whole rationale for his candidacy.

Juan Cole on the only difference between Sarah Palin and Muslim fundamentalist: Lipstick.