The problem with the current Democrat nomination process is that there is no person of non-color to push aside so either Hillary or Barack can be made their standard bearer.
One year ago it was conventional wisdom that the Republican Party would self-destruct while picking its 2008 presidential nominee. By contrast, the Democrat Party nominee was all but pre-ordained. Today, John McCain is the all but certain Republican Party standard bearer, and has been for several months now. The Democrats, by contrast, are busy eating their young as they self-destruct before our very eyes.
Pundits, analysts, and armchair observers everywhere have offered countless theories to explain this current state of affairs. Yet, none of them has offered a straightforward explanation that describes it all succinctly, and completely, because to do so is to expose the very source of the corruption that not only impacts the Democrat Party primary process, but American society as a whole.
Rather than just blurt out the answer which everyone knows anyway, for those few people who still don’t have a clue about how politics in America actually works, let me offer the following thoughts. Tell me if the Democrat Party decision would still be as volatile and tumultuous if we made a slight substitution in the Hillary-Obama race, according to the following two scenarios.
Scenario #1: Hillary Clinton vs. John Edwards — May 2008
Barack Obama is knocked out early, thanks to an early vetting of the Reverend Wright fiasco, or just a simple recognition that he’s completely unprepared and totally incompetent to assume the office of President of the United States.
In this scenario, Edwards leads Hillary in both popular votes and elected delegates, but [insert scandal or evidence of incompetence here], and it’s clear he can’t win the general election. So what do the Superdelegates do? They nominate Hillary at their Denver convention. Edwards complains bitterly. Fox News covers his press conference, but ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the LA Times, etc. are too busy speculating on who will be in Hillary’s cabinet and how much better the world will be with a Democrat in the White House to notice. Edwards retires to his 20,000 sq. ft. country estate to contemplate the misery of world poverty, or email Algore about the need for other people to reduce their carbon footprint and save the world from global warming.
Scenario #2: Barack Obama vs. John Edwards – May 2008
Hillary Clinton is knocked out early, thanks to one too many whoppers about sniper fire, Vast Right Wing Conspiracies, lost billing records, etc., or just from a simple recognition that she’s completely unprepared and totally incompetent to assume the office of President of the United States.
In this scenario, Edwards leads Obama in both popular votes and elected delegates, but [insert scandal or evidence of incompetence here], and it’s clear he can’t win the general election. So what do the Superdelegates do? They nominate Obama at their Denver convention. Edwards complains bitterly. Fox News covers his press conference, but ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the LA Times, etc. are too busy speculating on who will be in Obama’s cabinet and how much better the world will be with a Democrat in the White House to notice. Edwards retires to his 20,000 sq. ft. country estate to contemplate the misery of world poverty, or email Algore about the need for other people to reduce their carbon footprint and save the world from global warming.
Now, you can argue with the scandal that supposedly knocked Hillary or Obama out of the running early on in the primary process, or challenge me on what the next steps for Edwards might be under this scenario if he failed to gain his party’s nomination in 2008. But no one can seriously dispute the core argument I’ve made, namely,
Scenario #1: Hillary Clinton is behind in delegates and the popular vote, but John Edwards is wounded politically and at risk of losing the general election. The Supers dump Edwards and nominate Hillary, because they want to win.
Scenario #2: Barack Obama is behind in delegates and the popular vote, but John Edwards is wounded politically and at risk of losing the general election. The Supers dump Edwards and nominate Obama, because they want to win.
Is the trend clear yet? If not, let me state it a different way.
Scenario #1: The WOMAN is behind in delegates and the popular vote, but the WHITE GUY is wounded politically and at risk of losing the general election. The Supers dump the WHITE GUY and nominate the WOMAN, because they want to win.
Scenario #2: The BLACK MAN is behind in delegates and the popular vote, but the WHITE GUY is wounded politically and at risk of losing the general election. The Supers dump the WHITE GUY and nominate the BLACK MAN, because they want to win.
Got it yet? If a credible Black candidate or Female candidate is behind in delegate count/popular vote, and the White Guy is wounded politically, the white guy will be thrown overboard and the Black candidate or Female candidate will be elevated to that spot.
Don’t believe that Race and Gender are the determining factors in this calculation? Okay, then if not, the following would need to be an equally plausible outcome:
Scenario #1: The WHITE GUY is behind in delegates and the popular vote, but the WOMAN is wounded politically and at risk of losing the general election. The Supers dump the WOMAN and nominate the WHITE GUY, because they want to win. Or, Hillary is leading going into Denver, but her negatives are too high to win in November. So, the Supers give the nomination to Edwards. It’s a simple, clear-cut decision easily arrived at. Except for feeling sorry for Hillary who put up a good fight, there are no other factors that contribute to this decision.
Scenario #2: The WHITE GUY is behind in delegates and the popular vote, but the BLACK MAN is wounded politically and at risk of losing the general election. The Supers dump the BLACK MAN and nominate the WHITE GUY, because they want to win. Or, Obama is leading going into Denver, but his incompetence is too clear-cut to win in November. So, the Supers give the nomination to Edwards. It’s a simple, clear-cut decision easily arrived at. Except for feeling sorry for Obama who put up a good fight, there are no other factors that contribute to this decision.
Right. Hillary and/or Obama — who are ahead in popular votes and delegates — would be thrown overboard at the convention for Edwards, who’s judged by the non-elected Superdelegates to be a “better candidate.” Obama and Hillary go quietly; and if not, no one pays any attention to their objections because it’s all about winning, not the race or sex of the candidate.
And pigs fly.
Still having trouble accepting the fact that the only thing that matters to the Democrat Party is Race or Gender? What if it was Edwards and Biden going toe-to-toe in 2008? Would the Supers be agonizing over “denying” Biden or Edwards the nomination because they couldn’t win? Hardly! If Robert Toricelli can be “persuaded” to drop out of the 2002 race and give up his Senate seat 17 days before the election because the New Jersey Democrats thought he was a sure loser, clearly the stakes are higher when it comes to control of the White House. One white guy being replaced by another white guy is no big deal, politically. But, take the nomination away from a woman or black man, and you commit political suicide.
The reason the Democrats are in the pickle they’re in today is because there is no white guy to throw over the rails, or as I like to say, no person of non-color. (As I explained to my overseas friend a few years ago, even though we still have the NAACP, “colored people” is an insulting term, but “people of color” is not. This is one of the reasons I no longer use inflammatory language when referring to colossal idiots, but instead simply refer to them as “holes of a**.” Far be it for me to be unintentionally offensive when directly offensive will do just fine.)
Whether Barack maintains his lead and secures the nomination, or Hillary gets an extra boost from the Supers and claims it instead, this whole episode will end badly for the Democrats because both women and minorities are protected classes within the Democrat Party. Choosing one means disrespecting the other. Under normal circumstances a person’s race or sex are more important considerations to their party than the quality and character of the candidate running for office. But these are not normal times. Race and sex are the Democrat Party’s wedge issues; the clubs used to gain political power when wielded against a Republican candidate or conservative commentator. The irony here is that the dispute today is an internal, not external one. The clubs are being used to bash the heads of fellow Democrats, and in doing so the chance of winning an election with either Hillary or Obama — which logically should be at the forefront of any calculation — has become a purely secondary consideration to whether the party’s nominee sits or stands when they urinate, or needs SPF 15 or 40 on a bright summer day.
The fact that no one in the media will speak as plainly about this issue as I have here only shows the pervasive way the issue of race and sex have been allowed to poison our society. Martin Luther King spoke eloquently about the need for a color-blind society, where it mattered more what a person represented than how dark their skin was, or whether they could give birth or not. Forty years after his assassination one of the two major U.S. political parties still can’t get past looking first and foremost at skin color and sex. And as Geraldine Ferraro learned the hard way, pointing this out gets you branded as a racist.
The Democrats have pandered on the race and sex issue for years to gain electoral advantage. Now, in 2008, as someone has recently been quoted on another matter, these chickens are coming home to roost. There is no way for the Democrats to get out of this self-invented dilemma.
It should be a banner year for the Republican Party. That is, if we only had a candidate.
Jackson-ic@hotmail.com
http://www.scifi-jackson.com/
Read more articles by Phillip Ellis Jackson
I loved your "Holes of" comment. I started using MBE (Male Bovine Excrement) a few years ago as a substitute for the two-word description of most lefty speech. I agree with “no one in the media will speak as plainly about this”, but why single out the media? NO ONE wants to speak about it. After a good program on the two David Wilson’s, I began to watch the “Conversation on Race” and it was a joke. All the participants had a pro-black leftist agenda, even the SPF 40 users, or were intimidated into keep their mouths shut. I gave up on it after 10 minutes. It’s about like mentioning that gas was $0.35 per gallon when I was making $1.25 per hour, so I don’t think $4 dollar gas is so bad. Nobody wants to hear any of that. It does not fit the talking points format.
Comment by Ivan Ivanovich | May 2, 2008
A quote from Goldberg is in order here:
“…There are only three basic positions. There is the racism of the Left, which seeks to use the state to help favored minorities that it regards as morally superior. There is racial neutrality, which is, or has become, the conservative position. And then there is some form of ‘classical racism’ – that is, seeing blacks as inferior in some way. According to the Left, only one of these positions isn't racist. Race neutrality is racist. Racism is racist. So what's left? Nothing except liberalism. In other words, agree with liberals and you're not racist. Of course, if you adopt color blindness as a policy, many fair-minded liberals will tell you that while you're not personally racist, your views ‘perpetuate’ racism. And some liberals will stand by the fascist motto: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Either way, there are no safe harbors from liberal ideology. Hence, when it comes to race, liberalism has become a kind of soft totalitarianism, and multiculturalism the mechanism for a liberal Gleichschaltung. If you fall outside the liberal consensus, you are either evil or an abettor of evil. This is the logic of the Volksgemeinschaft in politically correct jargon.” – Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism
Comment by sedonaman | May 2, 2008
I agree w/ this assessment. Another way of saying the same things is that race and gender, when aimed (like six guns) at republicans, wreak great damage. The problem is that these two pieties for the demos are not rationally held political positions, but rather fanatically held beliefs about the essence of American society. IN short, as beliefs, they are incompatible. Today the demos have these "six guns" aimed at each other. The reason no demo-leader will intervene is because to do so on behalf of one, means alienating the half of the party who backs the other. This also explains why the debates between Hills and Obama are so vapid (or all about personality): any substantive debate of the issue (race and gender) must necessarily be an attack on race or gender.
Not suprisingly, the demos "solution" to this dilemma is equally undemocratic. The demos who support Obama argue that Hillary should simply quit, "for the sake of the party," ie. let's not have a debate because Obama's position is not debatable. I read somewhere that 25 percent of demos think Obama should withdraw (obviously the Hillary supporters).
The demos amusing spectacle is only going to get worse–esp. if some white men (ie. Gore, Edwards, Ted) attempt to shut it down.
Comment by Nathan Alexander | May 2, 2008