Lexington | Faith, race and Barack Obama | Economist.com

Lexington | Faith, race and Barack Obama | Economist.com: "For someone so inexperienced, and whose policies are so ill-defined, Mr Obama is extraordinarily popular. He is only 44, but people are already begging him to run for president. Something about him fills a gap in American politics: he seems not to be faking when he talks of mending America's religious and racial divides. He is that rare thing, a black politician who addresses the whole nation, not just an ethnic enclave.

That this is rare is tragic. It is also virtually inevitable, given the way the electoral system works. As a senator, Mr Obama is accountable to an entire state's voters. But every other black member of Congress sits in the House of Representatives, where most represent gerrymandered majority-black districts. Unlike Mr Obama, they need not bother appealing to whites. They need not worry about the ideological centre ground, either; since no Republican can win a majority-black district, the crucial contest is the Democratic primary, in which only the most passionate Democrats vote."