Obama Inevitability Watch, Pt. 1

If the latest Obama "flap" is any indication, B.O. is going to roll to the White House. I'm speaking, of course, of the "Is he black enough?" flap. The question is whether he's black enough to win African American support. If you missed Colbert the other night, you should know that some people are actually making this argument.

This is the kind of criticism B.O. gets. He may not be "really" black. Um, no matter whom the Democrats nominate, that candidate will get at least 90% of the black vote. Even John Edwards, who is definitely not black enough, even for a white guy. So . . . is this an issue in the primaries, then? My guess is that African American voters will love Obama and that, to most people, white and black, the "black enough" question will seem silly. This is yet another reason HRC is fucked--I'm sure she's counting on the support of African American voters in the primaries.

Roger Simon on "Beat It" today hypothesized that white America will vote for Obama to say that it is beyond all that, er, racial unpleasantness of the last 400 years. There was a comparison to JFK and that whole Catholic thing. If that narrative catches on, then Obama will roll. B.O. was compared to JFK several times.

Btw, the Russert roundtable was a veritable Council of War for the Conventional Wisdom (C.W.C.W.): Broder, Kurtz, Ifill, Simon, and Russert himself. And they said only positive things about B.O., and only negative things about HRC. She is, did you know?, cold and calculating in everything she does, apparently. I know that, because all the participants in the roundtable said so. All of them. HRC is so fucked. I don't think she knows it, but she is. She cannot escape those narratives. One panelist (I can't remember which) stated that B.O. has "audacity" (he's the black JFK), and HRC is "cautious." And cold and calculating.