The presidential options aren’t just Barallary and McOmney. It’s not just about breaking barriers to prove that every barrier can be broken. It’s not about five fingers that could make a decent hand if they all pulled together.

It’s about a nation forged in revolution and tempered by the ultimate painful division. It’s about a nation rendered by a regionalism that only benefited the wealthy, not most of the people nor the men who fought. And 143 years after that war ended, it works only to the advantage of the richest to keep promoting such divisions: Black vs. White, Women vs. Men, This Religion vs. That Religion, etc.

The one great sensible division a nation should welcome in its political divisions is between those who advance good ideas and those who push bad ideas. Good ideas include the continuation of individual rights and collective freedoms, knowing who has been a real enemy - foreign and domestic - and how to neutralize real enemy threats, and promoting a healthy, self-sustaining economy rich with opportunities and devoid of the barriers put in place by some of the wealthy and all of the bigoted. Bad ideas are far more numerous but they’re not so hard to spot: they push benefits to a few at the expense of the many.

Since July, it should be very apparent what’s been going on in Washington and on Wall Street. The Federal Reserve and the politicians have been trying to spare pain to the Investing Class, that group whose ‘pain’ won’t include hunger or untreated illness. If you’re poor, ill, unwilling or unable to donate cash to political campaigns, or fighting and dying in the oil war in Iraq, have a peanut. The elephants will get their peanuts by the ton.

As that link to Zogby notes, South Carolinans are starting to see this in greater numbers. They’re starting to see that every race and every gender shares certain inequities. Economic opportunities aren’t equal for women, blacks, or even white males. All of our children need to be educated properly. All should have good treatment options when ill. A nation can advance together or fall apart on the division between the needy and the greedy.

Barriers need to be broken to prove to doubters that the the barriers were artificial. But many poor and middle class white men didn’t create the barriers of bigots. Many have been victimized by the wealthy and powerful, too. When politicians come along willing to fight for economic fairness, they get accused of starting class wars, and huge amounts of cash get spent to convince people that fairness is really a bad thing.

South Carolina, like Iowa, has a chance to tell the rest of the country that it’s not gonna be fooled by an economic stimulation that tries to save Wall Street while Main Street is flooded and full of potholes. Nearly 150 years ago, a war began in South Carolina that that only the powerful profited from. This year, maybe it will say ‘enough’s enough’ and strike a blow against the forces of Big Money that treats most of us as peasants, servants and slaves.