You would think the mainstream media would be reveling in the triumph of post-racial America. We are, it appears, on the verge of having the first African-American as a Presidential nominee. White voters have turned out in the millions to vote for him. But are pundits congratulating their fellow citizens on putting American race relations on a new footing? Not quite.

The mainstream media is now increasingly fond of tales of racism directed toward Barack Obama and fixated on the near-certainty that racist tendencies, however submerged, will consume voters in November. John Judis takes us through the psychology of Americans’ intractably racist views, so subliminal they are hard to quantify and address. Then he delivers this news:

Obama is likely to continue having trouble with white working-class voters in the Midwest–voters who tend to score high on racial resentment and implicit association tests and who, arguably, decided the 2004 election with their votes in Ohio. Obama will also have trouble with Latinos and Asians, groups that score high on both indexes, and that can be important in states like California. It’s not hard to quantify Obama’s problem: If 9 to 12 percent of Democratic primary voters in swing states have been reluctant to support him because he is black, one can assume that, in the general election, 15 to 20 percent of Democrats or Democratic-leaning Independents may not support him for the same reason.

One wonders, then, why Hillary Clinton was excoriated for making the same point in far gentler terms and without the psycho-babble. What’s more, if Judis is right, polls are useless and voters are lying in massive numbers when asked about their preferences and if race matters.

You can debate whether Judis is correct (or whether Obama’s disdain for the lives and values of working-class whites is to blame for his poor showing with certain blocs of voters–remember, it’s never his fault), but one thing is certain: the Left seems ready to bludgeon Americans, state by state, if they choose to reject the Agent of Change. It’s racism pure and simple if we don’t all embrace the great Obama.

And if it’s true that we are unredeemable racists, one wonders if the Democrats should have thought this through, paid a bit more attention to exit polls and asked themselves whether, despite her annoying tendency to sow discord, Clinton was right.