For the past month, the campaign has sagged. Obama peaked, then the criticism of him as a hopemonger with legions of crazed obamabots at his back peaked. Me personally, I haven’t been feeling that same doped-up-on-hope feeling that I had around the time of his 11 contest winning streak.

But with this speech, I don’t mind saying that the hope is back. This was clear, unequivocal, and decisive on the issues surrounding wright and ferraro - but also nuanced, delicate, and precise.

I can’t speak personally to how well he spoke to the black experience in America (though my gut says DAMN fuckin well) but I think that he characterized very well a lot of the fears latent in the - especially liberal - white community. Fear of crime, ignorance and hatred coming out of the especially down and out black communities, the fear of job losses to affirmative action, and the fear of being racist, and the fear of seeming racist - these plague the white communities that I’ve been in.

Then the challenge he makes to the white community - to allow that the problems that black people face in this country are the results of slavery, not laziness - though it has been said before, it needs to be repeated over and over.

And the point is really, that no one is off the hook here - that we don’t get racial reconciliation “on the cheap” by electing Obama. But we won’t let other politicians, or the chattering class, or anyone, really, to allow these issues of race and opportunity to scatter and destroy Barack Obama’s campaign.

So would you say that hope is on the march?

I like how Jon Stewart summarized it last night: “On a Tuesday at 11 a.m., a Presidential candidate actually spoke to Americans about race as though we were adults.”

right on Obama, you are honest and yes, courageous. Who really talks to the American people with such complexity and candor — I love him!