I suppose that like a good pundit, I should punditize about Obama’s veep choice, whomever it might be. But the truth is I’m far more interested in what’s going on economically - in particular, the incredible surge last week of oil prices - falling today, down $1.99 per barrel as of this writing although traders ” the market would remain choppy amid jitters about supplies, growing global demand and a weak U.S. dollar,” so don’t go selling your oil stocks yet.

As gas prices nationwide hit $4 per gallon, the inflation is only beginning to ripple through the American economy, and those ripples - turning into waves - are likely to linger for some time. Should either the Israelies or the Bush administration take a swing at Iran before November, all bets are off - you’re talking gas at $5 per gallon, bare minimum, and as Atrios notes here, the pain is being felt more acutely in some quarters than others:

But the pain is not being felt uniformly. Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets. …

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The disparity between rural America and the rest of the country is a matter of simple home economics. Nationwide, Americans are now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline. By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure has surpassed 13 percent.

As a result, gasoline expenses are rivaling what families spend on food and housing.

As Bush and the Republicans are blamed for the state of affairs - fairly in some respects, unfairly in others - this is how the GOP loses the South and rural America, for a few years at least and maybe longer, “culture war” or no.

That is, if the Democrats are actually able to come up with some sort of solution to the problem.

The danger, of course, is that it’s beyond the reach of policy to right these wrongs; only time - and a great deal of economic dislocation - gets us ready for the new energy economy.

But in any event, whomever Obama chooses, should this economic crisis persist into November, it really doesn’t matter whom he chooses. McCain will simply not be able to get out from under the shadow of the collapse of the Bush years.

Update: Kunstler actually hammers the same theme:

One thing the pundits of the mainstream media seem to miss is how much more room for economic carnage there is in the months remaining. They seem to be laying their current odds on the idea that McCain and Obama are starting on a “level playing field.” In fact, McCain is already up to his hips in trouble from his sheer association with the Republican establishment, which will be so badly discredited by the shattered economy that it may actually go the same route as the 19th century whig party and dissolve in a putrid vapor of fecklessness. By November, the Republicans will be viewed as the party that wrecked the nation, and McCain will be in a hole so deep (still on the 20-yard-line by the way) that nobody will be able to see his lips move.