Has anybody noticed that many of the most reputable public opinion polls indicate that Barack Obama is set to garner the biggest white male vote for any Democratic Party candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964?

According to the Zogby-Reuters-C-SPAN poll, white and male voters are fairly evenly split between John McCain and Obama (both in the forties among "decideds")--with McCain holding a modest edge within both groups.

According to the same poll, 95 percent of African Americans report that they are likely to vote for Barack Obama. A staggering number—but not surprising in that this near monolithic statement of support would signal only a slight uptick from the past two elections: African Americans voted 92 percent and 88 percent for Al Gore and John Kerry, respectively, in 2000 and 2004.

More disappointing--but perhaps not surprising--huge numbers of Hispanics seem likely to vote for Obama as well. Many polls predict a twenty-to-thirty point drop off for McCain in 2008 from the Bush heights of 2000 and 2004. Some of that turnaround must be attributed to Obama's charisma and appeal as a minority candidate, but some of it, undoubtedly, is the mendacious Spanish-language ads depicting John McCain in league with the Talk Radio anti-immigration populist revolution of 2007. If voters had any sense of recent history, they would find these blatant lies so preposterous as to be hilarious. But, unfortunately, that particular "if" is a luxury we don't enjoy this election.

As many of you know, I tend to view George W. Bush as much more astute than the hapless buffoon he plays on TV. He certainly understood better than most that chasing off Hispanic voters was a bad idea for the GOP in the long term. It seems that those chickens are coming home to roost this time around.

But, back to the real point of this post, what does it mean for our "racist nation," if Barack Obama wins more white males than any other Democratic candidate of the post-New Deal era?

As I have said before, the liberal establishment in this country has a huge stake in the accepted notion that I am a racist. Why else would a middle-class American continue to vote Republican? Because I am a simpleton who does not understand my own interests. The GOP waves the bloody shirt of race hatred, homophobia, and evangelical sophistry in front of my face, and I revert to conditioned behavior.

Not too long ago America was "too racist" to elect Obama. But as his election grows more probable, we are now forced to endure the new explanation: white America is so desperate for a competent leader that there is no choice but to accept Obama. Economic fear trumps race prejudice. This assumption, by the way, rests on the well-known fact that Barack Obama is an expert on the economy.

All that noise aside, "whitey" turning out in record numbers to vote for the first serious African American candidate for president in our nation's 220 year history will speak loudly and clearly. Of course, the axis of disingenuousness, so invested in the image of virulent racism lurking in heart of Red-State America, will use every weapon in its vast arsenal to combat the notion of the United States as a place that actually hungers for racial justice and fairness.

At this point, who can bet against them?