Liza,

You are a much-needed voice of sanity in a sea of blogging foolishness. Barack Obama is not going to run for president. You know it. I know it. Obama knows it.

However, I must take it one step further and say that it is nothing short of fantasy to think that a black man could be elected President of the United States in 2008. I remember when some of the same people who now speculate about an Obama candidacy were pushing for Colin Powell to run:

Now the Powell-for-President drumbeat is sounding throughout the land. In an October Newsweek cover story, Joe Klein wrote this of the general: "He stands, at 57, as the most respected figure in American public life. He is an African-American who transcends race; a public man who transcends politics. He seems a distinctly American character, with an easy confidence that inspires trust even among the most skeptical." R.W. Apple, Jr., in The New York Times, called Powell "a coveted general" in a page-one story about competing GOP and Democratic hopes to claim him as one of their own; in the Los Angeles Times, James Pinkerton published a column headlined "Colin Powell: A President for All Seasons."

I contend that Obama-mania, much like Powell-delirium, allows some so-called progressives to feel warm and fuzzy and reinforce the lie they tell themselves about how racism isn't as bad as colored folks say it is.

Here's some food for thought:

In fact, white Republicans nationally are 25 percentage points more likely on average to vote for the Democratic senatorial candidate when the GOP hopeful is black, says economist Ebonya Washington of Yale University in a forthcoming article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. White independents are similarly inclined to vote for the white Democrat when there's a black Republican running, according to her study of congressional and gubernatorial voting patterns between 1982 and 2000, including five Senate races in which the Republican nominee was black.

But racially motivated crossover voting is not just a Republican phenomenon. Democrats also desert their party when its candidate is black, Washington found. In House races, white Democrats are 38 percentage points less likely to vote Democratic if their candidate is black.

"The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative." -- Paul Robeson