Landslide for a northern black urban liberal?

A friend who works in global film distribution makes a very good point about why we should be amazed not by the fact that Obama's lead over McCain is so narrow, but that he is even in this race at all:

People are forgetting two things: Obama isn't running for President of New England & California, and he is black. He should be down by 20 points. He shouldn't even be the candidate. The fact that he is leading, even if by a small margin, is simply staggering to me, and people are taking it for granted. It's like trying to imagine what life was like before email, and yet for many Americans, racism is not a memory.

It's a point well taken: the fact that a northern black urban liberal not only can get a major party nomination, but even looks set to win this race by several hundred electoral votes is a sign of just how profoundly conservatives have failed.

The same reader also notes another important benefit that an Obama administration might bring:

ps. i'm in rome right now, and as someone who sells American product overseas for a living, i'm here to tell you, we need Obama to win. when it's fashionable to be anti-american, it's fashionable not to buy american products, and the market for our crap has become increasingly difficult over the last 3 years. when i saw obama in berlin, and the spontaneous mobs that showed up to see him, all i could think of was, shit. if he can rally people around american ideals again, and 5% of them decide to have a hamburger, drink a starbucks, buy a pair of jeans and see one of our movies, it could really change things for us economically. point being, his global appeal is not just diplomatic and political, but economic as well.

I wish I were quite so sanguine. I am afraid that the damage done to the United States by the conservative-nationalist party may take a generation to undo, if it is undoable at all.