McCain Steele the presumptive winner in the November general

    Shelby Steele, like Clarence Thomas, is an accomplished black men, celebrated by the right, who got a leg up thanks to affirmative action, but who now opposes it for any African American who also might need a boost to the next phase.
    A self-described black conservative, Steele crossed over to the selfish side and, like Justice Thomas, has become a darling of the same white folks who believe prisons are more desirable destinations for young black men than colleges and that African Americans ought to be grateful that our ancestors were kidnapped from the mother continent to be enslaved here.
    Through the years, Steele has done well for himself. He is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute and in 1990 he received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book, The Content of Our Character, which theorized that it’s not them, it’s us—it’s not racism but our self-doubt that keeps African Americans down and out in the land of plenty.
    Steele's latest theory was revealed Thursday in a washingtonpost.com story, "A Run for the Ages?,” which interviews black historians on Barack Obama’s landmark victory. The good fellow predicts that the Illinois senator won’t best Republican John McCain in the November general election. Apparently, McCain's campaign team is feeling Steele’s sentiments as well. They’re so cocky they’re challenging Obama to have 10 town hall debates with the Arizona senator.
    I half understand why.
    McCain has a tiny campaign war chest while Obama’s runneth over. A series of debates will get McCain exposure on the cheap. But does the GOP standard-bearer really want to be that exposed? Not if his performance is anything like it was Tuesday, the same night Obama became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee. McCain's speech was so embarrassingly bad that even Fox Cable News--the right-wing's unofficial propaganda arm--didn't have much good to say about it.

    And as for Shelby Steele and his prognosticative prowess, in his latest book, Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, he predicted that Obama wouldn’t beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination.
    If Steele’s really lucky, come November, at least he’ll be half right.