"Is Barack black enough to beat Hillary?"

Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus talk about that on Bloggingheads in a segment that begins with Mickey calling John Kerry a "terminal doofus" but gets around to the promised topic.

And here's the link to Kausfiles on that topic, which discusses this essay by Debra Dickerson that asserts that Barack Obama isn't (the right kind of) black. Bob Wright and I talked about the same subject in a segment of Bloggingheads last week, which was based on this blog post of mine, talking about this news article about black leaders not (yet?) supporting Obama.

ADDED: WaPo has a big story on the general subject today:

The question of how Obama chooses to define and approach race looms large as he moves closer to formally launching his campaign next month....

Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University professor who has followed Obama's political ascent, said that he may be forced to choose: "You can be elected president as a black person only if you signal at some level that you are independent from black people" -- a move she said would be "guaranteed" to make black people angry. "He is going to have to figure out whether there is a way not to alienate and anger a black base that almost by definition is going to be disappointed," she said.