We are witnessing an epic event even before the electoral votes are counted: every poll I have seen concedes that Barack Obama will win the popular vote.

In the same Meet the Press broadcast that featured Colin Powell’s stunning announcement, NBC News political director Chuck Todd pointed out:

And, by the way, one other point about our map, and we’re seeing this shift. It’s almost as if the McCain campaign is conceding the popular vote.  We’re seeing a lot of tightening in places that while Obama probably won’t carry them, he’s not going to lose by large margins.  That means the McCain path is solely now an electoral college path, and if he wins the electoral college, it’s hard to see how he actually wins the popular vote, Tom.

If Todd is right, you will almost be able to hear the ground shift in American history. For the first time a majority of voters will have preferred a person of color in the White House. Regardless of how the Electoral College turns out that makes this perhaps the most important election ever.

There have only been three times in American history when a candidate has won the popular vote, but lost the White House–all of them controversial.

The first was the infamous Hayes-Tilden election in which Rutherford B. Hayes received 4,036,298 popular votes while his Democratic opponent Samuel Tilden tallied 4,300,590. Hayes won the electoral college by one vote.  What made this election so controversial was that 20 electoral votes were disputed between the two candidates. To resolve the conflict, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.

The second incident was the 1888 election. Benjamin Harrison totaled 5,439,853 popular votes and 233 electoral votes while Democrat Grover Cleveland tallied 5,540,309 votes, but won only 168 electoral votes. This election featured one of the great frauds in Presidential campaign history: the infamous Murchison letter.  Using the assumed name of Charles F. Murchison a California Republican dirty trickster named George Osgoodby wrote the British Ambassador asking how he should vote. The ambassador, with the most British name of Sir Lionel Sackville-West, replied that Cleveland was the best choice. This set off a storm among Irish voters, costing Cleveland New York and the election. In a second dirty trick, Republican National Committee chair William Dudley wrote a letter to Indiana’s county chairmen telling them to buy off voters in “blocks of five.”

The third we all remember only too well because it was decided not by the popular vote or the Electoral College, but by one vote of the Supreme Court. Had the Republican majority adhered to its so-called strict constructionist view that in most previous cases had deferred to states, Al Gore would have won the election. This campaign also featured another notorious dirty trick, the Miami Brooks Brothers Riot, in which paid Republican operatives purposely disrupted a vote-counting session in Miami’s Dade County. The rioters and those who organized the riot have never been prosecuted for the crime of disrupting a lawful vote count. Several of them received appointments to the Bush Administration as their reward.

BTW, need I point out that every one of these frauds was engineered by the Republican Party. The lessons in all three of these disputed elections is that candidates who have won the popular vote but lost the White House have all been victims of dirty tricks. Let us hope that this does not happen in 2008.

While the demon of race still stalks this country, Barack Obama’s victory in the popular vote would point to real progress toward racial equality in this nation. It will say in no uncertain terms that for a majority of Americans, race no longer matters as a factor in choosing who occupies the Oval Office. It will be one more fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream:

That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I am not exactly a fan of what sports analysts term moral victories–losing but doing so in a way that you reinforce a powerful message about principles–but if ever there is a moral victory, Obama’s winning the popular vote will be it.

A majority of Americans are ready to move beyond the narrowness and prejudice of the past toward a new future.

Note: With the election looming closer, I will feature shorter “dispatches” that focus on specific issues along with the usual longer analytical essays.

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