> <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13686.html>
> The discussion on race Obama didn't want
> By: Ben Smith and Avi Zenilman
> September 21, 2008 10:05 AM EST
>
> A new poll that accompanied
> much buzzed-about Associated Press article on Saturday appears to starkly
> quantify the cost of racism to Obama: 6 percentage points in the polls.
Very likely, although if Hillary had won the nomination, gender bias would have resulted in an equivalent drag on her poll ratings. My own feeling is that this election is a once-in-a-lifetime referendum on the endgame of Empire, such that the politics of race has become a cipher for deep-rooted anxieties at the loss of Empire. The choice is between an Obama bailout -- he has the savvy to convince the new metropoles to roll over our debts -- or the MacChurian Candidate's demented self-immolation.
This is the last chance America gets to decline gracefully. But if it chooses to shoot itself in the head, through ideological madness or Diebold machine-rigging, the new metropoles and the world semi-peripheries *will* unleash the satellite pulse weapons. I hope it doesn't come to this, but this is the stark reality of the world after the Olympic -- and military -- fireworks of August 8, 2008.
-- DRR