My fellow knuckleheads...

The most striking thing about (what I caught of) the pundit analysis of Senator Obama’s brilliant speech on race and religion is this: They all seemed blown away by the power of his thoughts and the honest courage in the way he shared them...

“This speech is probably the most monumental speech since Martin Luther King as it relates to matters of race…"  - Dr. Floyd Flake, Pastor of Allen AME Cathedral, a Clinton supporter, on Charlie Rose

"The rhetorical magic of the speech—what made it extraordinary—was that it was, at once, both unequivocal and healing. There were no weasel words, no Bushian platitudes or Clintonian verb-parsing…  It was a grand demonstration of the largely unfulfilled promise of Obama's candidacy: the possibility that, given his eloquence and intelligence, he will be able to create a new sense of national unity—not by smoothing over problems but by confronting them candidly and with civility." - Joe Klein, Time Magazine

"Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don't think I'm especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up." - Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University

“And so at 11 o’clock AM on a Tuesday a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults.” – Jon Stewart, Daily Show

... BUT it was this very fineness of Obama's talk that made them wonder how it would “play” to “regular Americans.” Regular Americans – you know them, they are what Clinton strategist Mark Penn refers to as “jugheads”. Or Pennsylvania “knuckleheads”, as someone in Philadelphia described them to Newsweek's Howard Fineman.

See, this is the commonly shared view of the ruling and mainstream media class – that elections are about who can herd the biggest bunch of idiots into the voting booths. You get those doggies moving with game-playing and manipulation and absurd spinning and fear…oh, never go short on the fear…and be sure to keep all ugliness going as long as humanly possible, without leaving fingerprints, of course.

Is this who we are?

Is this how we live up to our serious responsibilities as citizens in a democratic superpower nation?

Because the assumption is that we are a bunch of knee-jerk, over-emotional non-thinkers. 

Senator Obama bet another way yesterday. He spoke to America as if we could process sophisticated, nuanced, and plainly true words. As if we want to see, to understand, to grow. And heal. As if we want to take the good we've been given by America and show our gratitude by making it even better.

It is surely a test of us to see how We The Knuckleheads respond to that.

It is also a test of the Democratic Party – to see how its leaders line up to support Obama's deeply respectful approach to us... as if we are not just a bunch of jugheads.

Of course, I realize that all these most positive scenarios will require some hope.