Needless to say, tonight's "Top Chef" finale is one of the biggest moments of our lives. (That chart should make things perfectly clear just how big.) But does tonight's show have wider, more geopolitical ramifications?

This morning New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni wrote, "[T]his contest seem[s] like a timely echo of, or overture to, the precedent-courting presidential race: Will there be a first woman Top Chef or a first nonwhite Top Chef or maybe even a first openly gay Top Chef?" Woah, does that make John Edwards the Dale of the 2008 Presidential race? Has anyone checked his shoulder for a sun tattoo?

Based on two polls, the Gawker readership overwhelmingly believes that Casey will win the title of Top Chef. In an earlier two-way poll between Hung and Casey, based on the assumption that Dale would have been eliminated by now as indeed he should have been, Casey earned 61% of the vote to Hung's 39%. However when Dale enters into the equation, Hung's percentage drops to 30% of the vote while Casey's drops by the relatively minor 4 percentage points.

So as far as we can tell, this leads to the conclusion that John Edwards is a spoiler for Barack Obama, less so than for Hilary Clinton. That is unless we pair up the Top Chef contestant versus the top three Democratic candidates in terms of the given narrative. Hung, in this case, would be Hilary: an experienced but cold technocrat. Casey would be Edwards, the homey good-looking one full of passion and soul. Sadly for the Obama camp, Barack would be Dale.

So tonight, it won't just be the gays and me who tune into Bravo. Indeed, if they were wise, every pundit in America would be watching closely the fate of our three chefs battling in the Aspen Snowmass.