I hope the pundits point out tonight just how significant a moment it would be if Obama takes Virginia.  It would essentially mean that the state where slavery was first planted in America would be the state to hand us our first black president.  Only 40 years ago it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in Virginia, the state would throw people in jail for doing so, and it fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep that law.  Now, the state sits on the verge of electing a man born from such a union.  Obama's parents' marriage would have been illegal in Virginia, and the state would have officially considered him illegitimate.  Now, they're about to legitimize him as president.  We should never lose sight of the stark reality of continued racial injustice in this country, from a fundamentally unequal education system to a discriminatory incarceration state with a population of millions.  But now is a time to pause and note the significance of history.  Now is a time for hope.

This is the first time I've ever written anything to TPM (as you might be able to guess from my verbage there).  At any rate, I just want somebody to know I agree with CW's appeal to elevate the discourse.  I've read TPM since 2004, and what I always appreciated most was its in-depth coverage of political stories that don't get covered by the MSM as thoroughly.  The DOJ scandal was one of the best examples of this, I think. 

It's been a tough election, it's hard to avoid the mud when the McCain campaign seems to wallow in it, and I do think the blog format can lend itself too easily to the quick and sexy links and posts about stories like Ms. Todd.  But I think here is an example in which it would be interesting to use this story as a window into the power of race-baiting or the cult of victimhood on the right throughout the campaign, rather than get into the tawdry details of this pathetic story. 

Some of the first Palin stories tended to do the same, not just on TPM, but all around the blogosphere.  It seemed to me that TPM best addressed that issue by taking a step back and addressing the larger issues surrounding Palin, particularly the history of small-time cronyism that undermined her rhetoric of being a reformer.  Since then, it seems to me it's not so important that she doesn't know where certain countries are (or other particular gaffes), as it is that she doesn't seem to have developed an interest in learning about the world around her. 

The best TPM posts have always seemed to take a step back and tried to get at what the real story was underneath the surface.  That's where the most powerful arguments lie.  Keep that up, TPM.