Hillary is the first woman,  McClain is the first septuagenarian, and Barrack us the first black to have a good shot at the Presidency. Right?  But only one of the  three is running with a professed demographic rationale.  I have not yet heard Obama mention race, either explicitly or in code. I haven't heard McCain claim  he was running as old folks (although representing it as 'experienced' is OK.) But Hillary is running emphatically and unabashedly as a woman, and mentions it frequently. She does riffs on it in fact.  So there is not really an 'old'  candidate,  or a 'black' candidate but there is a female candidate.  It is in  Hillary's interest to do this of course After all the female vote is something like 53%. So I am not complaining. Simply observing.  If there is an “ethnic candidate”,  it is not of his own will Obama.

Nothing really  controversial yet. OK?

But it against this, and notwithstanding this,  that we have to appraise Ferraro's assertion that Obama is "where he is" because he is black,  something to an extent seconded by Buchanan ( and as an American Conservative subscriber, this is  less than I expected  from Buchanan). 

Barrack did not get into Harvard Law because he is black.  Did not get to be President of the Law Review because he is black. His book Dreams from My Father.  was not accepted by the publisher and become the touchstone it has because he is black. He did not get to be the talk of the Chicago progressive community because he is black. In his early years in the Illinois Senate he did not author some 970 bills (Hillary wrote 20 in 6 years in the Senate manly about naming post offices...check it out) and co-sponsor some 2000 others, because he is black. Nor does he draw immense crowds because he is black.  He is a charismatic figure and an extraordinary  orator.  He is, if nothing else, you would think Americans would understand it, great theatre black or white, male or female.   Saying he was invited to the Democratic  convention to speak because he was black,  is on the order of claiming they invited  Louis Armstrong to play the trumpet because he was black and not because he was the musician he was.  (Ferarro apologists simply would not understand why blacks would consider that demeaning.) And while admittedly the wrong ethnicity might have been a disqualifier (isn’t that always true in politics?) he was invited as an orator and the open minded  thrilled to  Obama’s words  not because they were black words....I didn’t know words had color...but because they the words they were.

So you could at least make a case that we  have an unusually  clear instance of someone becoming prominent essentially on merit.  Just imagine it. And in America? About which figure in recent politics, incidentally,  is this any clearer?

Now blacks represent about 15% of the electorate,. I thought.  And I am being assured by  someone who has spent years in America, observed politics, and passed 6th grade arithmetic   that the non-college,  low income,  post 50 aged female,  just plain “not going to vote for any black”  tiers in sum is smaller.  Based on what?  A candidate has to be from somewhere and wherever that is,  there are advantages and liabilities.   Given US national racial sensibility, running for national office as a black is an advantage? 

Isn’t “preposterous” a fair label for that?  Surely.  Based on behavior so far,  why isn't that more likely to allow him regional prominence but doom him nationally? And isn’t it more likely that what we are watching in process is a tragedy or sorts?  The final comment of  a truly  lamentable age, the last gasp of  disgraceful mine me “gimmee gimmee guys.” The generation I am part of.   Before we turn over the wreckage we’ve left  to our inheritors.

It would seem to me that Ferraro is legitimately and honestly even  earnestly simply unable to distinguish between a Jesse Jackson candidacy  or her own candidacy and an Obama candidacy. It seems to be a matter of  resolution limit in which her mind can picture  things. She sees the world in 600-800  pixels and black and white   The matter with Hillary, as her candidacy makes all too clear, of course  is not  intellectual limitation,  simply lack of scruples.  (Another motif in our unfolding tragedy.

What I can’t figure out in Buchanan.

cglobek