Democrats scamming electorate

During this year’s presidential race some interesting dynamics are beginning to surface through the Democrats’ quest for a candidate: they are scamming their electorate. Each of the three prospective candidates is positioning him or herself as something that he or she is not.

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Barack Obama is portraying himself as the first African-American to seek the highest office in the land. Obama’s assertion that he is black is akin to Charles Krauthammer claiming to be German. In truth, Obama is half black and for the purposes of this election he is positioning himself on that side of the coin. But the other half of Obama’s racial make-up is white, so he could just as easily claim to be white. Obama’s blackness is a thorny issue among many Democrats, particularly old-school civil rights black Democrats like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton, who truthfully claim that Obama hasn’t lived the African American experience. Andrew Young, of Jimmy Carter fame, who is also an old-line black civil rights activist, insultingly discounted any chance Obama might have at gaining acceptance among African American voters because Bill Clinton had been to bed with more black women than Obama. But then, chances are Bill has also been to bed with more white women than Obama. To say that the Democratic Party is taking identity politics to a new level is an abject understatement. In Obama’s case, it’s almost reminiscent of the Jim Crow cracker days when blacks were identified by their degree of blackness as “high yeller” or “able to pass”, except in reverse. Obama is a half-black, half-white man attempting to pass himself off as a black man, or as the L.A. Times’s David Ehrenstein decreed “the magic negro”. Only trouble is that given the degree of racial ambivalence Obama is projecting, it could lead to his transformation from “magic negro” to “tragic negro”. Similarly, John Edwards is rolling out identity politics by the truckload in his attempt to portray himself as the champion of the little guy. Nothing about Edwards relates to the experience of the common man, except his ability to convince juries that supposed injuries inflicted on his clients should result in fat liability awards of which Edwards gets to keep 30%. Edwards’s position is so dishonest (can you say “$1,400 haircuts”?) that I doubt that even Democrat voters are stupid enough to buy it. But, hey, you have to give the man credit for sheer inventiveness. Hillary Clinton wants to achieve the status of being the first female American President and if she wins the nomination and the election, she will have biologically achieved her goal. But there is little evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s feminism, short of the beautifully scripted and flawlessly executed misty-eye episode that took place in New Hampshire three weeks ago. If Mrs. Clinton is such a strong woman, then why does she need her husband to assassinate the character of Sen. Obama? Not only is Hillary scamming the voters about her feminism, she’s now scamming them by holding out a vague promise that Bill Clinton will be back in the White House, running the show. And maybe he will, which is counter to the spirit, if not the letter of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits individuals from serving more than two terms as President of the United States. But small technicalities, such as these have never been a problem for the Clintons, who have managed to make the notorious Tammany Hall political machine look like a philanthropic paragon. While the Republican primary is a homogenous sleep fest that offers very little excitement, the Democratic primary is like an episode of Jerry Springer with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda as guest host. While this may not be the most important election in the history of the US, it is certainly one of the most entertaining.