It’s hard to know how to feel about the fact that Sen. Obama’s, er, “racialist” background has finally emerged above the waterline—suggesting that his campaign may have “jumped the shark.” If it does lead the Democratic party’s grand panjandrums to hand the nomination to Hillary, even if she ends up having won fewer real delegates, I don’t think there’s anything the Democrats could do to assuage the fury of rank and file black voters. If his baggage is bad enough to rob him of the nomination, could they really offer him the number 2 spot? Would he even accept? Would a black third party candidate emerge, to punish the Dems—or would a good part of the black electorate sit out election day? If Hillary were really as smart as she thinks she is, she wouldn’t be offering Obama the VP spot; she’d be begging him for that slot herself.

If Hillary wrenches the nomination from Obama’s hands over this issue, suppressed black turnout would give McCain his only chance of winning. Running on his patented platform of “war, bankruptcy, and apoplectic rage,” he might, just might be able to beat a wounded Hillary. Which would “vindicate” the neocon takeover of the party, and give us four more years of ever-expanding military engagements—in the midst of economic collapse. Americans will be living in Galtieri’s Argentina.

Whichever of these three gargoyles wins, Americans lose.

That brings me to the one really creative political idea I’ve ever had (with all due credit to Marcus Garvey): Let’s all us white folks go back to Europe.

It’s not as if the Europeans were using the place. Let’s pile into Viking boats, festooned with Texas, Irish, Polish or Confederate flags, and row across from Labrador to Norway or Normandy (stopping at Iceland, if they have a Whole Foods, for supplies) and land en masse—perhaps to the tune of Bob Marley’s “Exodus”:

Uh! open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied (with the life youre living)? uh!
We know where were going, uh!
We know where were from.
Were leaving Babylon,
Were going to our father land.

(I had this idea years ago, and I swear that every time I put on “Legend,” I think of the Viking boats).

Just imagine the headlines in Le Monde….

We could move into all those perfectly nice French or Italian villages no one’s inhabiting, and make use of those exquisite Baroque chapels that no one’s attending. (We’ll divvy them up among denominations, fair and square.) With EU benefits, we can have decent-sized families, so Europe won’t “need” to import the population of North Africa to make up its labor force.

The Mexicans, who seem to want North America more than we do, can finally have it. We’ll have righted a great historic wrong, and given the place back to Indians. (Not the same Indians, alas, but it’s the best we can do.) I won’t vouch for the relations that will prevail between the newcomers and America’s native blacks… so they can come with us, if they want. Those who choose to, will find the France that welcomed Josephine Baker much more congenial than our horrid inner cities. I just hope they don’t try moving into the Banlieus, and taking them back from the Moslems. I think that’s a job for Italian-Americans.