According to a recent online poll conducted by The Associated Press and Yahoo News, a third of white Democrats admit that the color of the presidential candidate will determine who gets their vote on Nov. 4.

This is better news than it looks initially. We had to wait 100 years after the Civil War ended for Congress and a Democratic president to agree on landmark voting rights legislation that upheld the sanctity of the 14th Amendment by enshrining every citizen's right to vote.

Barely one generation removed from Jim Crow, it's a miracle that the percentage of white Democrats who can't bring themselves to vote for a black candidate isn't higher.

There was a time when the majority of Dems who didn't defect to Nixon's "Silent Majority" in 1968 would have dismissed the candidacy of Barack Obama on the grounds that the country "wasn't ready" to live up to its most radical democratic ideals.

To paraphrase that old Virginia Slims ad, "We've come a long way, brother." Indeed. The Democratic Party used to be the party of white supremacy, as many of my e-mail correspondents are fond of pointing out.

Last December, conservative historian Bruce Bartlett published an excerpt from his book "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past" in The Wall Street Journal.

It was a mini-compendium on the racial sins of the Democratic Party. It conveniently left out the sins of Democrats-turned-Republicans like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, but, never mind. It was an eye-popping list of quotes and party platform statements over the years.

I wish I had a dollar for every copy of Bartlett's essay that landed on my desk in the months that followed. I would make a fortune from a lot of Republicans who don't know to what extent they're living in glass houses, too.

Still, their points are well taken. There's a history of intolerance in the Democratic Party that is rarely acknowledged in polite company.

Given how odious a party that once housed the likes of President Andrew Johnson, Sen. John C. Calhoun and defenders of the Fugitive Slave Act was, a mere 33 percent of white Democrats refusing to vote for Obama in 2008 because of his color means we're practically in the Age of Aquarius.

Let's face it. A lot of folks have to die off before some of the attitudes of the last century have gone the way of poll taxes and brown paper bag tests.

In five weeks when Mr. Obama is elected the nation's first African-American president in what will undoubtedly be a squeaker, we'll still have to wait a generation until pigment becomes as much a non-issue as a candidate's astrological sign or shoe size.

My Republican friends who aren't totally brainwashed by conservative talk radio are mystified by the overwhelmingly high percentage of blacks who vote Democratic every four years.

They're quick to remind me that African Americans were among the most loyal constituents of the Republican Party until the New Deal came along.

When I point out that supporting the agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt was rational at a time when the Democrats were creating a social safety net during the Depression, there is a lot of tut-tutting.

According to my conservative friends, blacks abandoned the "free market egalitarianism" of the Republicans for the "second-class socialism" of the Democratic Party.

They point out examples of bureaucratic condescension, especially during the flurry of badly designed programs and legislation that came out of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that hurt blacks tremendously in the long run.

What often gets lost in the back-and-forth about which party would be best for African Americans is the fact that wherever they settle, there's going to be unresolved racial animus still kicking around.

Having said that, I will concede this much to my Republican friends. If Gen. Colin Powell were the Republican nominee for president in their party in 2008, I believe a higher percentage of white Republicans would support him than there are Democrats supporting Mr. Obama.

Republicans are simply more disciplined than Democrats when it comes to supporting their standard bearer. They're loyal, if nothing else. They can't stand John McCain, but he's still tied with Barack Obama in the polls.

Meanwhile, I remain a Democrat because my values are more aligned with that party's progressive agenda. This is a rational decision for me, not a family habit.

I'm also heartened by the fact that the majority of white Democrats are willing to vote for a black presidential candidate. For those who can't imagine doing such a thing, I ask that they try this thought experiment:

Don't think of the biracial candidate as a black man; think of him as three-fifths a white guy. That will get you through Election Day with a clear conscience.