This was not the era of "Yes we can" but "You Will," as in AT&T's 1993 "You Will" ads. Voiced by TV heart-throb (and notable La-La Land conservative) Tom Selleck, the "You Will" campaign offered a slick, neat vision of what people would get to do someday (maybe) using AT&T's proprietary telecommunications gizmos-- conduct meetings from a cabana on the beach, or tuck your baby in via video-phone, or take remote learning classes in empty, cathedral-like buildings from teachers thousands of miles away.

I will confess to loving those ads in 1993. They felt upbeat and science fictional, and they depicted gleaming, ghostly interfaces from a wired near-future that I hoped to live in someday. But that message looks, feels and sounds as obsolete now as the Clinton claim of inevitability. ("Clinton Will?")

In contrast, Obama's claims focused on the amazing, unlikely things Americans and their neighbors might be able do together right now, starting, of course, with getting a black man to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency. I never subscribed to the Clintons=Racist Demons thesis, but it is clear which campaign has best reflected our underlying cultural and political moment. Fairly or unfairly, Clinton is now understood as an AT&T-like product, while Obama is a platform.

The other thing Obama is, of course, is a cultural virus taking the country unexpectedly by storm just like Jes Grew.

Over on the execrable Michelle Malkin's Web site, readers had typically partisan response to the new Obama video by Taz Arnold:

..[t]he way I look at it, the people involved in this show of extreme stupidity have no stake whatsoever in the future of the United States. They're like a bunch of prepubescent little children singing the praises of a some [sic] cartoon character or a guy dressed up in a hippo suit.

…I had to quickly go to Heritage.org [website of the conservative Heritage Foundation] to purge myself.

…[b]lack "culture" never fails to disappoint.

While these comments were written in absurdly disproportionate response to the Arnold video, they easily could have been written by Ishmael Reed in 1972 to describe aghast reactions to Jes Grew. For all of the Clinton campaign's faults, the contrast between Hillary and Barack was, at its worst, a contrast between 1993 and 2008 style Democratic politics. The  battle between Barack Obama and John McCain is shaping up to be a culture war as definitive and epic as that depicted by Reed's classic novel.

The almost biological terror a Barack Hussein Obama presidency inspires in the right is the same terror Reed's Wallflower Order felt at the prospect of an America incurably infected by black culture. That terror reaches back to a foundational American fear of blackness, and it is a kissing cousin to the Lou Dobbs inspired fear over immigration. In Reed's book, the battle ends poorly for the virus Jes Grew, but as one character explains, "they will try to depress Jes Grew but it will only spring back and prosper. We will make our own future Text. A future generation of young artists will accomplish this." It's like he envisioned YouTube before it existed.

Gary Dauphin is a Los Angeles-based writer.

Gary Dauphin gives notes on Kara Walker's Negress, describes how the food riots crashed his sister's wedding and explains why Tyler Perry must be stopped. Veronica Chambers on Erykah Badu and the latest wave of black genius. Greg Tate on the genius of photographer Jamel Shabazz.

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