Racism and the Race.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment - Viewpoint essay

The race boils down to racism. All things being equal, Barack Obama would win the presidency hands down.

Unemployment is at a five-year high.

Wages are shrinking.

The stock market is in the doldrums.

The home foreclosure crisis has shattered the dreams of millions of Americans.

Health care costs keep rising.

Food costs keep rising.

Tuition costs keep rising.

The price of gasoline hit record highs this summer.

We're in the midst of two wars that aren't going very well, despite the premature declarations of victory in Iraq.

And three out of every four Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

This should be a banner year for Democrats, and by all accounts, it will be--at least down ticket.

But it also should be at the top of the ticket.

John McCain barely offers anything except the same old, same old Republican nostrums of less government, free trade, and lower taxes on business.

But in a weak economy, the last thing you want to do is cut government spending, since it will only deepen the downturn, as happened in the Great Depression. He painted Obama as a tax-hiking job killer, when in actual fact, Obama would give more tax breaks to the bottom 80 percent of Americans than McCain would, and they are the ones with the pent-up demand for goods who are most likely to spend the money the fastest, thus jump-starting the economy.

Not for nothing did McCain, early in the campaign, acknowledge that he doesn't know much about economics.

On health care, he proposed zilch in his acceptance speech. All he said was: "My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance." He didn't say what his plan was, or how it would accomplish that. And he resorted to the oldest canard about Democrats forcing "families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."

Just about every American knows that right now an insurance industry bureaucrat or a hospital administrator stands between us and our doctors. And any American on Medicare can tell you that government-funded health care really works.

Leading Republicans at their convention, such as Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, derided universal health care as some sort of--hold your breath now!--"European" idea.

Obama's economic and health care proposals also fall short of what they should be, but they offer a chance to make people's everyday lives better.

On other issues, Obama is wanting.

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