Virginia and North Carolina Democrats can, with considerable justification, lay claim to deciding the party’s 2008 presidential nominee. Back in February, Virginia delivered a huge victory to launch Barack Obama on his month-long, Shermanesque march through the Democratic primaries and caucuses held that month. Now it’s May, and North Carolina has basically ended the race by handing another big win to Obama. Not that there was much doubt about the eventual outcome, but the Tar Heel state on Tuesday confirmed Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president.

It’s about time. The longer the party’s primary dragged out, the more ridiculous it became. I never quite imagined Hillary Clinton of all people remaking herself in the image of a working class, shot-glass-tossin’, gun-totin’ kind of gal, but half the fun of politics is marveling at the nonsense that arises on both sides of the partisan divide with the marketing of political candidates as if they were cans of Diet Coke. The only things more ludicrous than working-girl Hillary is cowhand George Bush or maverick John McCain, but then you knew that already.

Obama’s a special case. He’s had a rough month or so as a result of extraneous circumstances, beginning with his well-publicized pastor problems and extending down the line to the emerging meme that the presumptive Democratic nominee is an “elitist.” I just love that last one. Here’s a guy who was abandoned by his father, raised by a single mother and his Kansas grandparents, who went to work as an $11,000-a-year community organizer after graduating from Harvard (where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review), who just recently paid off his student loans, only to get tagged as the “elitist” candidate in a field of  corporatist kowtowing multi-millionaires. Omaba is certainly elite in the sense that he’s put together a brilliant campaign to beat back the Clinton machine and is accomplished and capable in just about every way, but giving someone his due on the merits seems to be totally beside the point nowadays. “Elite” is a label that our broken national media affixes on a candidate (always a Democrat, natch), and never mind that public opinion arbiters such as Tim Russert or Brian Williams or George Will or Sean Hannity wouldn’t be caught dead living in the Rust Belt or flyover country or places like South Boston, Va., where “real Americans” allegedly are exclusively found.

It’s going to be a long campaign, that’s for sure. How stupid will it be? That’s really a matter for we the people to decide. People can think for themselves, with rational and independent spirits, or they can allow themselves be led around by the nose by political opportunists and bamboozlers who would just as soon hoodwink the public as utter the slightest inconvenient truth. Thus it’s our call whether ignorance will be the driving force in this presidential campaign — like that’s never happened before — so let’s at least appreciate the stakes.

A friend of mine stepped into the office last week (I was on the phone at the time) and offered the comment that Obama is a secret Muslim. Sigh. What can a candidate or his supporters do or say to kill off a zombie lie like that? First of all, it should go without saying — although it never does — that one of the great things about America is that we don’t disqualify people from participating in the public square because of their religious beliefs. Indeed, we’re a better nation for the freedom to worshipthe God of our choice. But I digress: BARACK OBAMA IS NOT A MUSLIM! Sheesh. You’d think Obama’s association with a mouthy Christian pastor (and doesn’t every candidate have one?) would be enough to put this falsehood to rest, but apparently not. The friend who peddled this nonsense happens to be one of the smartest, most accomplished people I know in town. If this is what passes for intelligent, informed opinion, then heaven help us all.

In the course of conversations over the past year I’ve heard Barack Obama called everything from a terrorist sympathizer to the Antichrist, and it’s still only May. The question I have for people is this: Is “stupid is as stupid does” just a figure of speech, or is it a national affliction? Because if it’s the latter, no one should complain about $3.50 gasoline or a lousy economy with no good jobs or America spending $700 million a day to fight a pointless war in a country that’s going to be nothing but a headache going forward thanks to the staggeringly incompetent leadership of the past eight years. What exactly is the problem here? If people want to differ with the solutions that Obama (and the Democrats) propose to fix the nation’s ills, that’s one thing, although good luck defending what passes for policy solutions from the Republicans. But to turn this race into a whisper campaign or a Manchurian Candidate live-action remake isn’t just stupid, it raises the question of whether America is going to be a sensible and functioning nation or just a swirling cesspool of wankery, doomed to irrelevance and decline as time goes by.

 I was having a conversation with a fellow I see at the YMCA from time to time, and although it started off pleasantly enough — we share a similar health condition that began the exchange — it went down hill from there. My partner in conversation is a World War II veteran, and for his service we should all be eternally grateful, but for some reason this fellow wanted to argue about how some black Democratic congresswoman has been running around aiming to destroy the Veterans Administration. I have no idea what he was talking about, but the fact of the matter is that the Bush White House has treated the VA horribly (and the same goes for Walter Reed Hospital, where the treatment of returning war wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan has been nothing less than a national disgrace). One thing led to another, and soon enough my friend was railing against “socialized medicine.” And what pray tell is the VA, I asked? My friend answered that he’s a veteran and has “earned” his government-funded health care. No argument there, I replied, but what about other people who earned theirs, too? What about old folks and retirees who worked all their lives and are now covered by that other pillar of “socialized medicine,” a.k.a. Medicare? My friend said those people should have to buy their own insurance. It wasn’t exactly in the belief that I’m the smartest person in the world that I pointed out insurance companies are in business of making money, which is impossible to do insuring old, sick people. Sometimes the government has to step in and fill the breach. It’s for this very reason that we have programs like Medicare and Social Security. But no. Just try arguing the point with people who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage for four-fifths of their day. The clown princes of talk radio don’t even pretend to care about the truth, instead stirring the pot in pursuit of ratings and million-dollar paychecks.

And people just eat this stuff up. Hey, believe what you will, but here’s the deal: This election presents a choice between a candidate who hasn’t deviated from the current White House line one whit, who if anything is more eager to start wars than George Bush, and has admitted he doesn’t know much about economics, and a candidate who said when we went into Iraq that the war was a bad idea, who opposes giveaway trade deals that rob America of manufacturing jobs, who hasn’t pandered to the electorate on the gas tax like John McCain and Hillary Clinton (and if you think the price of gas will go down by suspending the federal gas tax, I’ve got shares of Exxon/Mobil to sell you). In fact, Obama has put forth all kinds of interesting ideas, some excellent and some perhaps less so, which only underscores the fact he’s the only candidate in the race who offers any real hope of addressing the nation’s problems: health care, the economy, energy, transportation, international affairs, the environment, you name it.

The choice this November shouldn’t even be close, although it probably will be by the time the candidates run the gauntlet of our broken political discourse. My only advice is this: Next time you get an e-mail saying Barack Obama is a secret Blank Panther-radical Islamist-Osama bin Laden worshipper who wants to institute sharia law in America, step back from the computer, take a deep breath and think about how much sense all this garbage makes. The future of the Republic could depend on it.