The NY Observer’s Steve Kornacki:

…for the first time ever, a young African-American has emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee. And, while the breadth and depth of Obama’s coalition should be sufficient to defy caricature, the popular image of his bandwagon has it overstuffed with idealistic and awe-struck college students and black voters…

Which Democratic party is Mr Kornacki observing? The one in the U.S.? Sen Obama’s “broad” coalition has enabled him to do little more than run the board mostly in primary and caucus states where, when up against a Republican, his “coalition” as constituted demographically and numerically now, has precious little chance of actually prevailing in November. Moreover, he has failed also (and often badly) to top Sen Clinton in nearly all electoral vote rich states that Democrats actually could win.

Knowing such, let’s recall the 2004 presidential electoral map:

Presidential elections are not decided currently in the likes of Mississippi, South Carolina and Potomac Democratic primaries, or by Democrats Abroad. The only “large state” in which Sen Obama has clearly bested Sen Clinton that could also clearly go Democratic in November is his home state of Illinois. If Sen Obama does win the Democratic nod narrowly, only if Sen Clinton’s former voters back him in similar numbers in California (where, for example, she trounced him by 400,000 votes — the equivalent of how many Virgin Islands’ and Connecticut Obama victory margins?), New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Ohio, none of which he came close to winning in the primaries (and Michigan and Florida: where she probably would have won, too) and Pennsylvania, where it looks like she will win also, does he have any serious chance of winning the general election in the Electoral College.

For that’s where the election is actually won. But what if too many of Sen Clinton’s white (including also Hispanic) voters are so turned off by the Obama campaign, and coverage of the Obama campaign, that in November too many ignore the inevitable entreaties for “party solidarity” and find “the maverick” an appealing Obama alternative? That is why nominating Sen McCain rather than a “true conservative” may turn out to have been Republicans’ shrewdest move for this presidential election.

As the candidates have been winnowed down to the three, the “black vote” is now squarely Sen Obama’s. His other declared supporters are already falling at his feet, as we well know. So it seems unlikely there are dramatically more “undecideds” out there apt to break more towards Sen Obama rather than to Sen McCain.

Which means that a major consequence of the developing “racial” environment of this campaign is that Sen McCain’s backing seems the more likely to rise, while Sen Obama’s appears demographically to have already “crested”:

Only if Sen Obama suddenly pulls in huge numbers of previously otherwise committed, or as of yet uncommitted, white voters can his support numbers grow substantially. But how many more potential white Obama-crats are now out there, unaccounted for, still to tap?

Perhaps many more? But, currently, in late March, the senator still can’t muster clear “broad” white support within even the Democratic primary electorate. In the recent “Potomac primary”, for instance, he won a small majority of Democratic white men. Many extolled that as somehow demonstrating his broadening coalition. Yet when one steps back and looks at matters more dispassionately, one realizes that with Democratic white men an ever-increasingly endangered species in the south, 54% of voters from those ever dwindling numbers . . . does not exactly make for the best of “poster children” to point to in order to claim “broadening” support.

Also, that number means that even some 46 out of every 100 Democratic white men did NOT support him. Add in now also the wild card Ralph Nader — who seems likely to grab, not McCain supporters, but a few of those same white liberals (known increasingly also as “progressives”) — and that’s another oncoming headache for a nominee Sen Obama. For if he can’t decisively win over liberal, white men in even the south, what serious chance does Sen Obama have, then, of winning over millions of non-Democratic white men? Or millions of right-leaning, independent white women? They all get to vote in November too, remember.

Americans can certainly see what Sen Obama is ethnically.  We don’t need media repeatedly pointing it out. Yet mainstream media’s spending a ridiculous amount of time misty-eyed, sharing with us its reveries of how Americans may — or, more accurately should: because if they don’t elect this one, well, white Americans must be unreconstructed racists — elect an “African-American”, or a “bi-racial”, or a “black” president, are helping only poison the waters. And they are perhaps even making Sen Obama less electable.

Because they are denying him the right simply to be another politician. Americans vote for a head of government and a chief of state, not a media-ordained sociological statement. Which is why if this election is turned into an ugly one revolving around “racial identity” politics, Sen Obama ultimately can’t win. And, according to AFP, he knows that:

…Friday saw Obama moving swiftly to try and quell an uproar over racially charged remarks by his long-time preacher,…

What did the preacher say? You have probably heard already:

…the September 11 attacks were brought on by American “terrorism.”

Reverend Jeremiah Wright also urged African-Americans to sing “God Damn America” to protest their treatment…

Those statements in the flap of a mouth blink of an eye likely have just helped undo months of Obama-ish “healing” and “hope” work, through putting off tens of thousands (perhaps even hundreds of thousands) of undecided and/or independent whites. But media, naturally, eats up comments like that.

Yet to what end? They are a double-edged sword. Most media clearly craves an Obama presidency, but without a solid majority of even Democratic white voters quickly starting to trend his direction it is hard to see just how, if it becomes a “racial identity” cluttered election, Sen Obama can hope to prevail when the overwhelming majority of the national electorate is, well, white.

The necessary outreach to whites just becomes daily tougher for him with that “inclusive” attitude bubbling just below the Obama campaign surface, ready to burst out unexpectedly from among (particularly black) supporters; and with whites also simultaneously admonished to be careful of what they say of him. Indeed, if the current general support framework doesn’t shift dramatically and we do end up with a “racial identity” driven McCain v Obama contest, once (mostly white) Republicans, any disaffected (white) “Ferraro Democrats”, white independents, and especially white “undecideds” are finally tallied up, Democratic nominee Sen Obama may not be merely defeated, but beaten quite badly.

And then lots of people are going to be find themselves very disappointed and disillusioned. Including in media; but then of course media always gets a chance to profit from a new spin. One can almost see one likely post-defeat headline, which they had helped pave the way for: “Racist America Is Hope-less”.