Like a lot of Obama supporters, my emotions surrounding this whole campaign have run me so ragged I think I may have lost some weight. I’ll leave it there, because I’m not about to hop on a scale and meet heartbreak face-to-face. But you get my point. This thing is not easy to handle without a drink in one hand and a bottle in the other.

It’s hard to point to any one specific time and say “That was when it was the worst,” but I will say that the so-called ‘bump’ that came after McCain chose Palin as his vice presidential running mate clearly ranks as one of my all-time whiplash moments. First I was thrilled to death because I figured McCain had just handed us the election in a gift-wrapped package. Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin was – and is – so clearly unprepared for the nation’s highest Number Two slot that it seemed like a slam dunk.

Silly me, allowing myself to forget how many truly stupid people there are in America. What was I thinking?

Next thing you know, we start hearing things like how Palin has actually energized the Republican base. About how much she has added to the ticket. About how so many more Republicans, particularly the Religious Right, are feeling so much better voting for McCain now that ultra-rightwing religious Sarah Palin is on board. Her admittedly impressive speech at the Republican Convention was celebrated as if she had turned water into wine, and Obama into a silly afterthought.

A woman who possesses virtually none of the credentials required to be able to take over as President if McCain bites the dust was being re-created into a Republican Joan of Arc, the face of salvation. To imagine how I was feeling, imagine the Titanic being pulled from the belly of a whale by a triumphant Minnie Mouse. Some things are just hard to picture.

Then came the Charlie Gibson interview. Palin was finally, and definitively, exposed for the inch-deep dimwit she is. Sure, she has some political skills, and she knows how to perform at a podium, but ask her a tough question about how she might handle Russia, and she replies that she can actually see the Big Bad Commie Menace from her doorstep. Asked about energy issues, and the woman whom McCain described as a formidable energy expert says with a straight face that her state provides 20 percent of America’s energy supply. Actually it’s somewhere around one-tenth that amount, but that’s OK Sarah. We know the training wheels haven’t arrived yet. Meanwhile McCain’s aides are still trying to mop up that oil spill of a fuck up while stitching her lips shut as best they can.

This would be a wonderful comedy if it weren’t so scary. The fact that this race is close at all is all the proof anyone should need that America needs to purify the gene pool before the stupidity genes take over and infect the masses. Obama is such an obviously superior candidate to McCain in so many ways that it’s almost not fair to McCain. It’s like putting a youthful Muhammad Ali in the ring with Donald Duck. In normal circumstances, all the betting money would be on Ali because most folks figure that anyone who can beat Joe Frazier can probably whup a cartoon duck.

But these are not normal times and this is America.

So then Wall Street went haywire. It was almost like God was saying, “What in the hell do I have to do to make you people see? What? You want another flood? WHAT???”

Well, now it finally appears that the Code Red status of the American economy is starting to wake up enough fencewalking voters. They’re starting to think maybe, just maybe it’s time to give the black guy a shot. Hell, everything is falling apart anyway. If he screws up, we get to blame the nigger, which is always fun. And if he succeeds, then, well, what the hell, right? Hooray for change and all that good shit.

You know, I’m trying my best to battle my natural cynical instincts and see the glass as half full. Honest. Because I do realize that the mere fact Obama has made it this far is not only historic but mind-boggling in America. This is something virtually no political ‘expert’ would have ever foreseen, which is why all those experts were writing him off for so long in the early days. It was a cute, energetic, hopeful story, but it just couldn’t happen.

But then it did happen.

And so just on that basis alone I should probably be smiling and feeling good about my country because of how far this has come. And I admit I feel better about America than I have in a long, long time. That’s no joke. But having come this far, I want the whole damned enchilada. I’ve already gone through the warm-up routine three times with Shirley Chisolm, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I believe black folks are plenty warm enough now. No more advance acts.

Time for the real deal.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Read my wife’s blog @ thedspotredeux.blogspot.com

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Tags: 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin