AND NOW, FROM MIT...

"Voting analysis shows Obama won because of his support among blacks"

This was the conclusion of a recent MIT study that analyzed Obama's win. In other news, pandas have shown a willingness to eat bamboo shoots.

Does anyone else get the feeling that supposedly high-profile research sometimes reveals facets of life that are intuitively obvious?

But jokes aside, the research has a point. Many people behaved as if racial barriers were finally shattered and that race relations were now officially over. While people's joy and hope was palpable and understandable and while this has indeed been a very important election, history does not really care for exaggeration. I personally never believed that Obama truly transcended race in the minds of many. In fact, as accomplished as he is, I think that he won as much because of the utter incompetence of the other side as because of anything else. Would he have won if he had been running against Ronald Reagan? I don't think so. We are not old enough yet for that to have happened.