Charles Krauthammer, on the Democratic self-immolation over race and gender:
The pillars of American liberalism -- the Democratic Party, the universities and the mass media -- are obsessed with biological markers, most particularly race and gender. They have insisted, moreover, that pedagogy and culture and politics be just as seized with the primacy of these distinctions and with the resulting "privileging" that allegedly haunts every aspect of our social relations.They have gotten their wish. This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It's not a pretty picture. Geraldine Ferraro says Obama is only where he is because he's black. Professor Orlando Patterson says the 3 a.m. phone call ad is not about a foreign policy crisis but a subliminal Klan-like appeal to the fear of "black men lurking in the bushes around white society."
Good grief. The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of identity politics, and the beginning of a turning away. The pessimist will just vote Republican.
Liberals chortled over the GOP's travails with religious conservatives, and laughed over the Republicans' tearing each other up over internal division. That's what you get when you practice Rove-like identity politics on the right, they said (with some justification, I should add). Well, well, well. Liberalism created this race-and-gender monster tearing the Democratic party apart, and imperiling its prospects in the fall. Sauce for the gander, if you ask me. Now, let us conservatives sit back and have a good laugh at what they've done to themselves, just as they laughed at what we did to ourselves.
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This is the logical outcome of the ideology and politics of the left. They have assigned value to biological markers, and created a whole scheme of, shall we call them... identity prototypes.
This is why a poor, black, abused, lesbian transgendered woman is the ultimate authority on right/wrong and political policy in the ultra-liberal orthodoxy.
And then the 'validity' of people declines until you reach the bottom rung - white, middle class, male, faithfully married and heterosexual Christians. Even just having affairs moves you up in the "enlightenment" prototype model - since that proves you aren't too "christian".
What we are seeing as a source of conflict, is not really racism. It's a conflict between opposing sets of prototypes. Does Obama's various "values" outweigh Hillary's "values"?
There's a certain obviousness that Hillary thinks not, and that her set of protypical value sets are the ultimate. Sadly, it appears that Obama's just using a set that's been most publicly promoted. If he were just gay and transgendered, for instance, this wouldn't even be a fight among the truly orthodox liberals of the day.
We conservatives look at this as being patently silly. And our response is "which is the easiest to defeat, or will do the least damage?"
There WAS a moment, when Obama was fighting while standing on the ground, and was making substantive questions of Hillary. Maybe he still wishes to do that, but the debate has gone beyond that. It has become the war of the prototypes. Which mold does he fit, and is that mold "higher" than Hillary's?
Can you imagine Margaret Thatcher squeezing out a tear or two to get her way? She wasn't called the Iron Lady just for fun. She was made of sterner stuff. Stuff that we used to think all leaders needed.
It is irrelevant to the "prototypes" if Obama has great policy ideas or not. Or even if anything he says or promises is practical, possible, or even good.
If Obama wins, the election for President will be one of diligent efforts to compare ideas and ideology for the conservatives, and one of frenetic defense of the prototype for liberals - "you can't criticise him, he's ( insert series of prototypical values here). And if you do, you're ( name the assigned character flaws for ignoring the prototype values here).
And the easiest and most inflaming will be the race prototype. Thus, the racist accusation will be the defense of Obama. Not solely, but it will be the first salvo from those who are most intent on defending the value of the prototypes, than on defending the real, substantive values of the man himself.
Yes, we can laugh at the conflicts now, but come election season, no matter who wins, the left will be united on defense of prototype over real values - that's assured. And I see little chance of them abandoning these artificial and contrived constructs anytime soon, even if they are decimated in the elections. Those are the value system, that's the whole substance of the current left.
I think the race and gender stuff is a smokescreen for the continuing power struggle within the Democratic Party. The union bosses lost control of the party to the liberal elites back in the 1968. Since then many working-class voters either cross-over to the Republicans during elections or stay home. Obama, whatever his background, comes across as another "suit" as did Kerry and Gore. Hillary seems more down-to-earth, like someone who actually works and therefore like someone who will actually get something done for the working class. The increasing majority of blacks who are distracted by the race issue (and notice they become more of an Obama block as the media emphasizes this issue) and the women who take offense at sexist attacks against Hillary only obscure the real struggle. Should we laugh at this? I fail to see the humor.
What's Krauthammer blathering about now?
The primaries will soon be coming to an end, and Hillary and Obama still seem more like pals who will soon be running mates than foes trying to pull the other down for a few votes.
The Democrats are looking strong in terms of being open to people of race and gender. A black man and a white woman. A white woman and a black man. I can understand why the Republicans want to manufacture a race relation problem within the Democratic party. The GOP's looking pretty.......white and male these days.
The Democrats have a problem, but it's nothing to do with race or gender. The problem's going to come about if one candidate wins enough delegates by the voters to get the nomination, and the independent delegates change the result. Americans will be right to be mad, and if it happens, I can see many Democrats not voting in the fall.
The primaries will not end this race; it will continue at the convention.
"RaceHustilingPovertyPimps and ManHatingFeminists."
Max, that's a work of art. But "homosocialists" is still my favorite for today's Democrat Party because it's more descriptive. Race and gender are useful to Democratic operatives, not because they give a damn about people of color (Clarence Thomas) or women (Condoleezza Rice), but to move us closer to their goal: European Socialism, complete with thought control.
What I can't stand to see is good but gullible people who put their hope, money and votes into the Democrat party--for 50 years they trusted in the bull crap of welfareism and they got squat. When life jumps up and kicks them in the teeth, the Dems tell them it's the Republicans who are too blame for the lack of a worker's paradise, like the Ninth Ward in New Orleans---a mostly Democratic local and state plantation, the crop of which is Democrat votes. Let's hope Jindal and all the chickens coming home to roost nationally can begin to reverse the tide.
OTOH, the old Rockefeller and Libertarian wings of the GOP keep me from being a registered Republican. Not that they are as destructive to a republican democracy as the Socialists.
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