Hopefully, either of you can take it from here...
............
Yes, I'll take the baton for a moment.
Sadly, I don't have too much time this evening to fully develop an argument: a black cube, safely installed behind a wall of electromagnetic inhibiting glass, is in need of assistance.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. Clearly, there is a difference in perspective - probably, as you say, determined by our differing generational position and life experience - between CB and me.
What are those differences?
For one thing, Charles B is impressed - and perhaps even a bit excited, though in a guarded way - that so many White people are voting for a Black guy to be president. While I acknowledge that this is an intriguing element of the BHO saga, I'm not nearly as stirred.
Why?
Because I'm convinced those votes are being harvested via a very subtle sort of perception management (and Charles B, this is the new thing I'm referring to about which much more can be written). Indeed, I feel that this candidacy represents the apotheosis of neoliberal political strategy. It reminds me, on an immensely larger scale, of my time as a liaison to Euro biz leaders for Wharton's Aresty Institute. Clean cut and "well spoken", I was presented, subtly, as visual proof racism in the US was a waning force. BHO's attractiveness to White voters suggests that a certain kind of racism - let's call it absolute supremacism, which might be defined as the belief that non-Whites can do absolutely nothing worthwhile - is less prevalent now than in the past.
But it would be a mistake to take the wrong lesson away from that.
I have to stop here; there's work to do.
More tomorrow.
.d.