We are not made freer to chose between the candidates independent of race, but are being forced into making our votes a referendum on racism itself. From this moment on, anyone who fails to succumb to Obama's charm and his paper thin resume is simply a backward looking racist.

Although Obama ticked off a list of polices we're led to believe he would support, his actual policy papers and economic advisers remain the most conservative of the original Democratic troika.

Until the Rev. Wright tapes exploded into the mass media last week, Sen. Obama and his campaign had largely skirted the issue of race. When it suited their electoral strategy to manufacture disingenuous charges of racism on the part of the Clinton Campaign ("fairy tale", "Lyndon Johnson", "...as far as I know", "He's lucky to be who he is") they did so, sometimes shamelessly. As I'm sure strategist David Axelrod knew they would, these phony outrages played out in teevee sound bites and selectively edited YouTube clips. Within days, the Hillary Clinton who had been exemplary on race and the issues that mattered to African-American families, was transformed into something "worse than George Wallace."

Sen. Obama said that the issue of race was an "an issue Americans cannot afford to ignore right now". Yes, but oddly enough he'd managed to ignore it pretty entirely until charges of racism were leveled at his "white devil" minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Was it America or just Obama himself who could not "afford to ignore" the issue any longer?

Accounting the abuses, sorrows, and fears of both the African-American community and that of Middle America, Obama painted himself as the heir to them both, while simultaneously painting us, the listener, into that corner where the only way we can affirm our rejection of racism is to vote for him.

Who else but Obama could turn a losing hand such as Wright had dealt him and turn it on his critics so deftly? It was no longer Wright's evident racism that might prevent them from voting for him, but their own. This was done in an understated, almost self-deprecating way, as it had to be, given the awesome impertinence of what he was actually selling.

Although Geraldine Ferraro was savaged by the Obamabots for pointing out that Obama was lucky to be who he was, Obama himself once again held up his DNA like a magical totem and offered himself to the public.

I do not believe that Sen. Obama, for all his DNA, is the most qualified to be president, however good we can make ourselves feel about ourselves by voting for him.

He is a shrewd and extraordinarily gifted politician, as this speech shows, but the United States is in the middle of an economic and military meltdown and needs something more.

But if Democrats really have no choice but to vote for Obama to expiate their collective racial discomfort, it is again likely that the junior senator from Illinois will win the nomination in August.

As the repository of all the party's idealism and audacious hope then, the issue of Rev. Wright will come back to the forefront.

I not only fear, but feel fairly certainty, that when Obama goes forth to assail the party which, frankly, doesn't give damn about "change" or voting against their own barely concealed racism, he will be destroyed.

Having thrown the racist charge over every little slight (real, perceived, or manufactured) at his Democratic opponent, Sen. Obama will be the proverbial "boy who cried wolf" when the real volleys come at him from the GOP.

Most Americans didn't want this to be a referendum on race and racism, but on the larger picture in which racism is but another instrument wielded by a corrupted and collapsing ruling class. This was the election in which people of differing colors, cultures, and economic status were to join together to advance an agenda of domestic reform and international realignment.

But now that the election has been hijacked and turned into a referendum on racism in which a vote for anyone other than Obama is itself an act perpetuating racial hatred, it has ceased to be about Democrats winning, but about purging the party itself with an Obama litmus test, even if it leads to electoral defeat in November.

I reject this framing. Voting for Obama (and all that magic DNA) does not guarantee an end to racism. It doesn't even guarantee a coherent program on the kitchen table issues of poverty, health care, and education - the very tangible pragmatic means by which the imbalance between the races in America can continue to be worn down.

Sen. Obama may be another wonderful lost cause (like Al Smith) which the Democratic Party can feel proud of. We can sit around patting ourselves on the back as the US continues to COLLAPSE around us.

Obama needs to persuade people he has the program and the ability to win the General Election, not just that he has the right racial mix.

Supporters would like to say that he has given his race speech and he's not going to go there again during the campaign. Really? Obama may have no choice. Yes, it's cruel, yes, it's unfair, but if you think we've seen the end of those Jeremiah Wright YouTube clips, you are very, very wrong.

Frankly, I think the problem offered by the combination of anthem, flag pin, "really proud", and Rev. Wright will be augmented by new characters in the galaxy of anti-American extremists surrounding him as the GOP creates the shorthand to destroy him.

"Obama is alien, weird, un-American and his friends/family are worse."

Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

Good Morning, President McCain