There is no longer any real doubt that Barack Obama will win the impending presidential election. Nor is there any doubt that he will win by a substantial margin. John McCain may have made a good stab at shoring up that part of the Republican base that offered him only minimal support - the evangelical right wing - by appointing Sarah Palin as his running mate. In doing so, however,  he ensured that much of his own base deserted him (even if it took them a few weeks). Whatever she may or may not explicitly have said, there is much about Palin's biography that connotes xenophobia, a sense of racial and cultural superiority, and bigotry, and justified or not (I think it is justified; you can't trumpet your "tolerance" of gays as if it's a generous gift without signalling that you feel the same way about other differences), this paints McCain as a sell-out. Support from Hispanic voters, even conservative ones - gone. Jewish voters - gone. With them... Florida, gone.

That's before you even get to the economic crisis, and with it desperate policy-on-the-run that has been labelled "erratic" (if "elitist" is code for "uppity", then "erratic" is surely code for "addled" or "senile") including yet another proposed bail-out - this time, a $300,000,000,000 spend on buying bad mortgages; the wrong policy, too late, and another demographic gone. Even an extraneous game-changer, like a collapse of North Korea or a vast natural disaster, can only bring home still further how badly the Bush years have mauled American administration. In other words, any crisis the McCain-Palin camp may be praying for is almost guaranteed to help Obama anyway.

Since his campaign "suspension" a few weeks back, the McCain camp has not had a single idea realistically aimed at turning back the pro-Obama tide. It is clear that if there were any ideas floating around that might do this, they would have been put into play by now. Therefore, there aren't any. And therefore to that... we are going to see a continuing increase in Obama's support, culminating in an electoral vote landslide somewhere above Clinton's 370.

What will that mean? For starters, it will mean that a significant number of people have voted for Obama despite some racial misgivings: in other words, they'll be recognising him as the better candidate even though they aren't comfortable voting for a man who is half African. As wacko as a woman who  says Michelle Obama is a horse may be, she is probably going to vote for Obama anyway. Secondly, it will mean that voters collectively no longer accept that the managerial side of Presidential politics can be taken for granted. The utter collapse of the Bush administration is ample demonstration that being the guy you'd like to shoot pool (or moose) with is not an adequate qualification for the Presidency.

I honestly believe that this is going to result in a real transformation, in all the best ways. A significant bloc of voters will have swallowed their demographic discomfort and voted on the basis of their performance predictions. Once you've suppressed your racist impulses the first time, and voted for a black man anyway, you're a lot less likely (I think) to take race or gender into account the next time. Moreover, the overwhelming support for Obama among black voters is less likely to be a shoo-in for a future black Presidential candidate; with that historical milestone passed, everyone will be more inclined to put race and other prejudices aside and vote thoughtfully. In short, it's not going to matter as much that a candidate is white like me, black like me, born-again like me, or secular like me. It's going to be about résumés and managerial bona fides - not exclusively, because there are always going to be idiots out there, but much more than it has been for some time.

ps: I know that complacency is to be feared. Don't get complacent. 

pps: I know it won't be bigger than Reagan's landslide.