Obama's gift is that he understood America's great secret, that Americans have a deep and abiding need to love one another, and that we only lack the courage to do so. The theme of Obama's campaign has been a simple affirmation that we are in fact, one, in ways Malcolm never could have though possible and in ways Martin Luther King only dreamed of.

Better still, playing the attack dog would lessen the need for Hillary to fake enthusiasm for Obama. All her anger and resentment and disappointment of the past 20 months — hell, the last 20 years — could be channeled into gutting McCain like a trout. People expect Hillary to rage against the Republican machine. For years, she has been their whipping girl, just as for years she has stood as a symbol of perseverence and strength for many Democrats — especially women. Instead of having her run around trying to sunnily convince women or working-class whites of what a swell guy her former opponent is, Obama's people should just wind her up, point her in the direction of these constituencies, and let her rip John McCain and his whole lousy party a new one.

But the ultimate goals remain the same. True, Osteen steers clear of abortion for the most part, and Warren, every bit as opposed to homosexuality as Jerry Falwell was, prefers to talk about AIDS relief. But both men — and the new evangelicalism as a movement — continue to preach the merger of Christianity and capitalism pioneered three quarters of a century ago. On the surface, it's self-help; scratch, and it's revealed as a profoundly conservative ideology that conflates church and state, scripture and currency, faith and finance.

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia.

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest. . . .

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

Outrage is often phony; major campaigns contrive their outrage precisely for effect. (When I ask about these contrivances, I am told that they are "part of the game.") But outrage is often phony even if it seems real. Phony outrage is outrage for the sake of feeling outraged; it's a comfortable outrage, an outrage that serves to reinforce feelings of solidarity and get rid of feelings of dissonance. Outrage is a covering emotion, like its close cousin, self-righteousness. We love to be offended. We love to feel affronted.

It's been a long time since anyone at church was singing the hosanna from "Jesus Christ Superstar" or Cat Stevens's "Morning Has Broken" at the offertory. Even the vast catalogue of the St. Louis Jesuits — the stalwart, lite-rock ballads heard in almost any Mass for the past few decades ("One Bread, One Body"; "Be Not Afraid"; "For You Are My God") — has come under assault.

Last night at the National Constitution Center, at a Democratic debate that was hyped by ABC as a discussion of serious constitutional issues, America got to see exactly what Obama was complaining about.

While Wright's sermons were pastoral . . . they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. . . .

In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope . . .

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party's most reliable constituency. . . .

One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

"Jeremiah Wright is one of the giants in our community, but we all get it wrong sometimes," [said the Rev. Gerald E. Bell]. "Have I preached like Jeremiah Wright? Absolutely. Take two minutes of my sermons, and you don't know what you'll get. But I was proud that Barack was able to distinguish himself from his pastor's incendiary remarks but not dismiss him totally." . . .

"I have heard from dozens of pastors over the past five or six days, and they just laugh out loud that people would think their parishioners agree with every word," [the Rev. Jim] Antal said. "It's just absurd. Obviously what's going on is guilt by association, and that's what politics is about, but that only works with an authoritarian understanding of religion, and we don't have that in mainline Protestantism."

Consumer spending is responsible for more than two-thirds of US economic activity, but consumers are unlikely to borrow if they are worried about losing jobs. And lower mortgage rates don't provide much of an enticement to buyers worried that home values are going to continue to fall. . . .

Deeper interest rate cuts hold other dangers, such as further weakening the dollar and igniting inflation. The dollar has fallen along with interest rates, losing value against currencies in countries with higher interest rates, and hence, higher returns.