The latest national polls show a tightening in the race to the White House, especially in key states like Ohio and Florida. But when it comes down to it, winning in November [2016] will depend on which candidate has a viable path to 270 electoral votes.

Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

History shows that people often do cast their votes for amorphous reasons-the most powerful among them being the need for change. Just ask Bill Clinton.

All of our panelists are deeply engaged in the topics at hand, so that leaves me free to convene a little dinner party, sans alcohol, and invite the rest of America to listen in.

One of the things that Africa needs, everybody seems to agree, is some measure of debt relief.

The latest national polls show a tightening in the race to the White House, especially in key states like Ohio and Florida. But when it comes down to it, winning in November [2016] will depend on which candidate has a viable path to 270 electoral votes.

It's not surprising that you wouldn't see that side of me on television, but in real life I find the world to be quite a funny place.