Beer in the Headlights

Flim-flammery and bamboozlement

Young voters: Obama's race as an asset, non-issue

Younger (half) black guy = Cool, hip, trendy and helps assuage the guilt that's been driven into the heads of our youth by the NEA indoctrination squads in public schools.

Older white guy = Not cool and evokes imagery of crotchety SOB in plaid shorts with dark socks and sandals.

Certainly, the chance to vote for a black man is part of the appeal, Morgan says. "It's fine if they vote for him because he's African-American, as long as they don't stop there," she says. "But I would be voting for Obama whether he was white or whatever. The fact that he is African-American is a plus."

The way Patricia Turner sees it, Obama's race is just one factor that makes him more accessible to younger voters. Turner is a professor of African-American studies at the University of California, Davis, a diverse campus where she says no one racial or ethnic group is the majority.

She recalls a conversation at a recent university dinner where her table included a few Asian-American students and a white woman in her 30s who was married to a man of mixed race. Asked what struck them about Obama, they listed everything from his age and rearing by a single mother to the fact that he is biracial.