Buffalonian is right, but it's not just the media (though that may be the easiest point of contact for us mere citizens).

All of these consultants, advisors, media players -- reporting like this makes it very clear that the horserace concept is not just a metaphor or analogy. Elections are obviously quite literally just another sport for them. And like pro athletes, they will all do very well regardless of who wins. The ones who win will be even richer and more privileged. But the ones who "lose" will be only marginally less so.

Sadly, that does not apply to us, the citizenry. We mere citizens -- the ones whose work constitutes the production of our economy; whose purchases create the demand for our economy and those of other nations; and whose lives are the ones disrupted, damaged, or lost in wars that we did not start or environmental catastrophes that we did not create -- a few of us will win, in that our lives will be more comfortable, more secure, more safe, and more free. Many of us will muddle through, working ever harder just to maintain our places in the world. And some will lose, sometimes everything.

The very least that we need is a media that will tell us the truth. We also need political leaders, and a political system, that recognize that, as we've been told of late, "ideas" and "elections have consequences."

Neither of these will just happen. We will all -- regardless of party and political persuasion -- have to demand them, loudly, repeatedly, consistently. The latest election suggests that just possibly this isn't the completely futile hope that the previous election indicated it might be. But there is much, much more to be done, and much further to go.

Before advances in biochemistry and neuropsychology discredited it, there was a theory that "double-bind" (damned if you do, damned if you don't) demands on people, especially when younger, was a cause of schizophrenia.

And it wouldn't be surprising if requiring people of color simultaneously to represent and explain their heritages and to ignore and transcend them would be a bit of a stressor. DD's detailed the absurdity with acuity, sensitivity, sincerity, patience, and wit.

Someone asked when we'd be past the need for essays like this. One good answer was when we don't have to wake up to news reports of unarmed people getting shot at 50 times, or 41 times, or being raped with broomsticks in police stations. But another might be when double-blind experiments stop showing that resumes with African-American-sounding names must be sent in numbers 50% greater than resumes with white-sounding names to garner the same responses from the same employers. Or when African American net worths are no longer a small fraction of white net worths even when matched for incomes.

Those people who think that "the end of racism" is nigh are fooling nobody but themselves. We've got a long way to go, and it's on all of us to do the work. Navigating double-bind demands is just a small part of the workload.

I'm not sure why everyone's getting so bent out of shape over the prospect of a Giuliani presidency, or a McCain one for that matter. The poll numbers that show McCain and, to a lesser extent, Giuliani as "front-runners" mean little or nothing. Even aside from the fact that, at this point, the polls reflect little more than existing name recognition, all such surveys are NATIONAL measures.

The only poll numbers that matter are those among Republicans. Before the general election, the primaries. As the Republican primaries are currently configured (most are, unlike those in, say, Massachusetts or Michigan, "closed" primaries, meaning only registered Republicans can vote in them) neither of them would be anywhere near likely to win, at least if current polls are any indication. Check out freerepublic, redstate, etc (you'll survive, nothing there is contagious... unless you have preexisting proclivities). The Xtianist right, "movement" conservatives, and many self-styled "libertarians" LOATHE McCain, and distrust Giuliani.

Now, it's not impossible that the Republican powers that be, knowing this, will re-structure their primaries in time to allow non-registered Republicans to participate (or to register as Republican on the day of voting, as is permitted in Massachusetts). But if they do so, they will almost certainly lose the evangelical vote, a bloc that has been required to form the bare-majority, and the lack thereof, that marked the last two presidential elections (dis-respectively).

Nor does the history of third parties in the country ("Connecticut for LIEberman" notwithstanding) suggest that we have a lot to worry about if either chooses to pursue a run as an independent.

BTW, a note for the copy-editors: the last word of the quote from Steve Powers, in the last line of the article, is an obvious typo; the word is of course properly spelled "fuhgeddaboudit."