Will Obama Ford the rubicon?

Barack Obama skillfully opened the door to running for president on Meet the Press this Sunday. Although Tim Russert was nowhere near as aggressive about Obama retracting his previous statements as I thought he would be. Everyone and their mother is now weighing in with their take on whether he should run this time round or wait. On the Chris Matthews Show, Joe Klein argued that because of his family’s reservations Obama wouldn’t end up running. Others think that this is his moment and that it’s now or never. In the acres of Obama coverage, this snippet from The New York Times stands out to me:

One Democratic strategist close to Mr. Obama who spoke on the condition of anonymity suggested that the senator would probably look to the results in Tennessee, where Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. is trying to become the state’s first black senator, to measure the obstacles Mr. Obama might face in a national election.”

If Ford scores considerably fewer votes than the opinion polls suggest he will, it'll suggest that there are still reservations among white voters about supporting a black candidate. But if he pulls in the votes that the polls show that he should, it will demonstrate that Obama’s race will not be a significant handicap for him even in a heavily white Southern state. To understand how Ford is running neck and neck in a state that plumped for Bush over native son Al Gore in 2000 and that the president won by a massive 14 points in 2004, watch this interview Ford did with the Christian Broadcasting Network.