Barack Obama certainly won the support of the African-American community, and earned it for all the right reasons.

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BARACK OBAMA APPROACHES MLK/MANDELA STATUS 

Some random Election Day 2008 observations.

The Standard Refrain:  Egregiously long lines awaiting the civic-minded. If I thought I was going to get a jump on folks by showing up at the polls earlier than any other time in my voting life, it turns out that by showing up at 7:15 am., I was just in time to be late. The line, maneuvering along at a decidedly un-snail-like pace, was the longest I'd seen at this location since Bush/Kerry -- and I've been voting there since Bush/Dukakis.

Hope:  The level of sheer, undiluted energy that persisted at my polling spot, a public school, also seemed evident around every polling location I happened upon as I made my way to work after voting. It was quite distinctive and in flagrant contrast to the dour aura that seemed to define the high-turnout Election Day in 2004 between Bush and Kerry. There is clearly a palpable difference in spirit when millions of people gather to vote for a candidate -- in this case Barack Obama -- rather than against someone which seemed to be the force that drove Kerry voters to the polls in 2004.

Witnesses to History:  A group of middle school students, both black and white, clearly awestruck by the sheer volume of voters and the easily discernible energy we produced are sneaking peeks at the crowd from a classroom window above. After briefly disappearing for a few moments they re-emerged with a hastily-written "Obama" sign fashioned out of notebook paper.

The Act:  A mother, accompanied by her pre-teen daughter, proceeds from the polls with arms wrapped around one another's waist. Their glowing, black faces both exhibited Publisher’s Clearinghouse winner-type smiles, seemingly out of satisfaction, pride, accomplishment, and hopefully, from a clear understanding of the historic nature of the act they'd just carried out. Shortly after that scene, a similar one was noted as an older cane-wielding African-American woman slowly exited held ever steadier by the additional assistance of her adult son. They both carried the same look of satisfaction, glory and accomplishment exhibited by the mother/daughter duo. Meanwhile, a very young mother, perhaps scarcely out of her teens and pushing a stroller, quietly awaited her turn while occasionally fidgeting with her infant daughter. She was later overheard saying this was her first time voting.

Some observers might suggest that these otherwise routinely innocuous events extend, on this occasion, beyond the realm of the noteworthy in the minds of many African-Americans and other minorities. They would be right. Taken in a certain context, they seem to illustrate the uniquely historical nature of a paradoxically subliminal, yet overt coming of full circle. Examined further, they reveal a reinvigorated and more clearly-defined generational/historical lineage that was strengthened, if not rediscovered through the participation of millions of African-Americans in an endeavor that many had come to accept as audaciously unthinkable regardless of the generation from which we came of age: a bona fide opportunity to consider a compellingly pertinent African-American from among other presumably similarly-qualified candidates for the highest office in the land.

As we all now know, these evident Obama supporters awoke the following morning to the maximal satisfaction of knowing that because of their November 4, 2008 endeavor, the audacious was no longer unthinkable. With their help in addition to that of millions of other African-American voters nationwide, Obama had won in an electoral landslide. Black President!

But it needs to be pointed out that Obama won, not in large part because of blind support from a solid, but politically unsophisticated voting bloc of hyper-partisan, race-conscious African-Americans who, in deciding which candidate to choose, placed Obama's race over both the content of his character and what the other side argued was a lack of experience.

Not so. With all due respect to John Hanson, Barack Hussein Obama will soon become America's 44th President simply because he was demonstrably the better candidate by far and thus more deserving of the office. Like much of America, and indeed, much of the world, African-American voters perceived this and voted accordingly. The fact that Obama's heart pumps African-American blood is simply immaterial.

This issue requires addressing because of pre- and post-election rationalizing by bewildered elements within the vanquished party currently in full face-saving/ass-covering mode. For many of these folks, Arizona Sen. John McCain's loss was simply the product of a charismatic lightning rod of identity politics converging with a disastrously-timed economic collapse. This rational eludes the fact that they supported an almost tragically ill-suited candidate who ran an astonishingly inept campaign against a smart, well-organized Democrat. It's fairly simple. Barack Obama fashioned and implemented a brilliant and ultimately successful election strategy against a party noteworthy for an uncanny ability to continuously "win" elections in spite of its inability to properly govern once their victories are attained.

In pointing this out, I'm not overlooking a longstanding political premise which holds that typically, the party in power during hard times undergoes political backlash divulged through protest votes against its candidates at the first available opportunity. Thus, there's no question that a large percentage of white voter support for Democrat Obama was steadfastly entrenched in a "throw the (Republican) bums out" school of thought obviously rooted in the economic collapse.

Also not being ignored is the obvious fact that for many African-American voters, a fair amount of Barack's political appeal rests upon an almost alarming reservoir of personal charisma that with this historic achievement, propels him toward a sainted realm occupied by the likes of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, for African-Americans, this was no protest vote against the Republican, white or any other establishment per se. Certainly not in the way that past black electoral support for the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or even Shirley Chisholm may arguably have been construed. Ditto for Carol Moseley Braun; Lenora Fulani; and to a far lesser extent, Alan Keyes.

Indeed, the endeavor of near-universal African-American support for Obama extends far beyond just personal charisma. It is solidly well-founded and upheld by a sustained flow of irrefutable evidence -- the stately manner by which he represented the U.S. during excursions abroad or his composed debate performances, for example-- which confirmed that this candidate was thoroughly up for the job in ways that are also thoroughly obvious.

African-Americans -- as was unquestionably the case with the tens of millions of his white supporters, including many influential Republicans -- saw Barack's mettle proven through his conclusive intelligence, astute organizational skills, and a serenely confident and comfortably knowledgeable display of presidential temperament and awareness. He demonstrated not only the intellectual capacity to appropriately conceptualize the presidency, but also an ability to easily convey that understanding to the electorate, both black and white.

By contrast, the baffling incoherency of McCain's campaign channeled images of former Kansas Senator Bob Dole's hapless Oval Office challenge: distracted, unsteady, unscripted, unsure, erratic, bumbling, clueless, unglued and senselessly inept.

This bold dissimilarity between the candidates and their campaigns is what renders so tremendously outlandish, an assertion that the practice of identity politics by African-Americans voters was a major factor in Obama's victory. Some McCain supporters (and even some perhaps bitterly misguided Democrats) have implied that blacks played the "race card" and that it trumped qualifications and experience as the sole rationale for Obama's African-American support.

Consider the source. The charge is ludicrously short-sighted, if not outright spurious on many levels not the least of which is that it comes from some of the same McCain supporters who had also expressed hope of their own that the Bradley Effect would tip the election in their candidate's favor. It's also preposterous in that technically, Obama isn't black -- he's half-white. Am I to presume that McCain supporters felt that African-American voters, including former Republican Secretary of State, Colin Powell, were only voting for the "black" part of Obama's genetic make-up?

This charge of poor judgment by African-Americans is further undermined when you consider that it comes from supporters of a campaign that judged a completely in-over-her-head Sarah Palin to be the person best qualified to become the GOP's first-ever choice for a female vice-president. As it turns out, the Palin choice was itself little more than a shamelessly transparent exercise of identity politics involving gender by the McCain campaign -- a crass gimmick nonetheless feverishly embraced by his supporters. But in doing so, they effectively render their complaints about racial politicking by African-Americans as little more than the "pot calling the kettle black."

But beyond being both spurious and preposterous, it's also a troublesomely challenging assertion. It conveys the notion that the motives of those blacks who do in fact engage in identity politics are less pragmatic or perhaps, when taken in context with the McCain campaign's Country First slogan, even sinister compared to those of whites who claim to be simply "voting their interests" when they choose white candidates over equally or better qualified blacks.

Lastly, their argument either overlooks, or fails to take into consideration that Obama, as pointed out in a Newsweek article titled How He Did It, had “moved beyond racial politics and narrowly-defined interest groups” since as far back as his days at Harvard. Indeed, it is exactly this aversion to racial politics by Obama that frustrated Rev. Jackson, -- arguably the premier icon of identity politics -- into delivering his embarrassing "hot mic" gaffe last summer during which, among other statements, Jackson complained that "Barack is talking down to black people."

In some respects, Jesse could have a point. As far as I know, the Obama campaign had made no direct appeals for the African-American vote through promises delivered either overtly or in “code.” For one thing, Obama's had to go out of his way to assuage the concerns some white voters have about supporting an African-American for a job extraordinary as that of Commander In Chief. You don't get that done by appealing for black votes.

In reality, if the "race card" was in fact played during this campaign, it was done so by those white McCain supporters who charged black voters with practicing identity politics. In fact, McCain supporters would find themselves hard-pressed to unearth any statement from the Obama campaign that promised specific attention by an Obama Administration to any plank in what might be construed as a pro-black “agenda.”

I happen to share the belief that anyone, be they black or white, who supports a candidate based simply on the candidate's race is a fool who may very likely be voting against their interests. Thus, when I voted for Obama on November 4, I did so for what I believe to be the most acceptable reason -- I thought he was the better candidate. However, on February 5, the date of this year’s Massachusetts primary, with the opportunity to vote for Obama staring me right in the face, and fully aware that another chance may never again present itself in my lifetime, I cast my vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton. I did so out of both a sense of loyalty (I had been a supporter prior to Barack's announcement) and because I felt at the time that between the two of them, she was the better candidate.

With that in mind, it is quite difficult to seriously contemplate shallow complaints about identity politics vis-à-vis African-American voters when such complaints emerge from a party that, rather than assiduously point out why blacks may find its economic policies more appealing, or why a McCain presidency is not basically a Bush third term, instead plays obfuscatory gutter ball by rolling out grotesque "guilt-by-association" innuendo regarding Obama's middle name; by name-dropping the likes of Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and by insulting voter intelligence by offering feckless political caricatures such as Palin and Joe the Plumber.

Unfortunately for McCain, whose understandably mirthless concession speech I nonetheless found both moving and magnanimous, neither Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder, or even Cedric the Entertainer could obscure from voters the gimmicky, vacuous, divisive, erratic and insubstantial character of the self-professed “straight-talking maverick’s" long, strange trip down the presidential campaign trail.

Obama on the other hand, smartly avoided indulging in the "the silly season's," harvest of such political pitfalls, diversionary hijinks and "straight-talking" shenanigans. He instead submitted to voters a campaign that focused on specific issues and persuaded with cogent, well-formulated ideas. The result?

Black President!

Authors Bio:

Anthony Barnes, of Boston, Massachusetts, is a left-handed leftist.

"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world." - Unknown Monk (1100 AD)