When a Dream Becomes a Nightmare

Two highly-qualified and charismatic candidates, each representing one of the main preferred victim groups. A Republican administration with a catastrophic foreign policy record, headed by a president who makes Gerald Ford look like Albert the Great. Economic woes -- always good news for liberals seeking to regain office. Can anyone think of a more desirable scenario for the Democrats than this? And yet all is not well with the party symbolized by the jackass. Or is it a mule? (Donkey? Burro? Does anyone actually know?) At any rate, the race between Hillary and Obama, which ought to represent some idyllic form of liberal valhalla, has turned sour. You would think that two liberal candidates with these credentials would have virtually identical platforms -- which, in fact, they do (at least, according to what they say). You would think that it would have been long-since settled that one would run for president and the other for the Stepin Fetchit part -- er, I mean vice president. But that hasn't happened either. But mainly, you would think that any sign of rancor or hostility -- or questioning of the other's qualifications -- would be the last thing anybody would stoop to, since isn't it just fabulous news for liberalism, and "diversity", and "affirmative action", and all the other golden bricks paving the road to Utopia?

But woe is us, human nature rears its ugly head, and rather than a friendly, gentle, non-judgmental tea party we have the equivalent of a feces fight between two troupes of primates in the jungles of The Cameroon. And the fight is not even about the candidates; it's about their pastors, friends, supporters, spouses, children... shoe size... anything but what might be considered relevant to performance as president. Now clearly, the liberal scenario -- assuming there was one -- would have had one of two groups emerge first, as the group of reference for a strong candidate. That person could have been a woman, or black... or, I suppose, a black woman, but that's kind of a waste of victimology. That person, if elected, would have served proudly and turned the nation away from all of its old habits of bigotry, prejudice, and "hate". The way would then have been paved for the _other_ candidate, i.e. the black, or woman, or whatever. (Clearly, no other "minorities" or victim groups need apply at this early stage of the plan. There will be plenty of room for lesbian albino Eskimo paraplegics in elections to come.) But again, human nature being what it is, we wound up with one candidate of each persuasion, and like piglets fighting for the sow's teat, they each insisted that this was "their year" and that it was "time" for someone of their demographic to ascend to the throne. And how, after all, could the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party deny either one their shot? Haven't they been saying, for years, that everybody is a winner (except, of course, white male Christian heterosexuals) and all must receive a prize? But it's an embarrassment of riches, and it creates unwanted friction... and mostly, it exposes the Democrats for the perennial hypocrites and exploiters that they are. In their mind, putting a member of a given group up for elected office is no more than a way to con other members of that same group into voting for the person... and making others vote for them as well in order to assuage liberal guilt. But nobody wants to think about the "negatives" until it's too late -- and even then, no one wants to talk about them except their rivals in the race, and even then in (usually) euphemisms. So the Clinton campaign has clearly, um, tarred Obama, if not feathered him, because he is black. And the proof of his blackness is not his actual racial heritage, since being an actual African doesn't really "count" in black America. The proof is in his church, and his pastor, and the "radical" things he has been soaking up from 20 years of sitting in a pew -- things that, up until a few weeks ago, any _white_ liberal candidate could have said with impunity. The negatives on Hillary hardly need pointing out. Start with the fact that she has already _been_ president (OK, "co-president", BFD) for eight years, and that she was at the heart of nearly every scandal that rocked (or should have) that administration. Then consider that, if she moves back into the White House, she brings with her the biggest pile of baggage to ever squeeze through the front gate -- namely, Bill Clinton.

Yes, the Democrats are wondering, right about now -- in the immortal words of Rodney King -- "why can't we just get along?" But they are having to live in the world they created for everyone else, and I call it poetic justice.