The bed they made
Instead of uniting America, Democrats have been hard at work dividing us into superficially recognizable groups for decades. It’s now reached the point where we can hear the clucking of the chickens as they come home to roost. In the Wall Street Journal, Jerry Bowyer writes that it is most visible in the upcoming Democrat primary in Pennsylvania;
One in five supporters of Mrs. Clinton here say they won’t vote for Mr. Obama should their candidate lose (and vice versa, according to pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College). Only 12% of nonwhite Pennsylvania voters support Mrs. Clinton. Only 29% of white ones support Mr. Obama. Gender and age cohorts break along similarly sharp lines, with women and older voters going for Mrs. Clinton, men and young voters trending toward Mr. Obama.
As a student of political history, I see these poll results as something deeper than a passing nomination squabble. For at least 40 years, Democrats have been playing identity politics and empowering factional blocs within their party.
Though others might pick a different starting point, I’d trace the start of that process to 1968 Chicago, where antiwar protestors rioted outside of the party’s national convention and party leaders inside responded by creating the McGovern-Fraser commission. That commission went on to write presidential nomination rules establishing delegate quotas based on age, race and gender. State parties followed suit by structuring caucuses to favor organized activist groups such as unions.
And so now Pennsylvania Democrats, like their brethren around the country, are splitting along race, age, gender and geographical lines as they are forced to choose between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. But then, why shouldn’t they? Democratic voters are just doing what they’ve been trained to do – thinking of themselves in group terms.
Yesterday, one commenter on this blog tried to make a point that the US is less “progressive” than other countries because we haven’t elected a woman as our head-of-state. More identity politics. Instead of picking the best person for the job, we should select our presidents based on accidents of birth, by the randomness of nature. I guess we all know for whom that commenter is voting – solely based on the fact that we’ve never had a woman president.
The same goes for most of the residents of Washington, DC who declare almost daily that they’re voting for the first Black president. Never mind that he’s an incompetent boob running one of the most juvenile campaigns ever in American politics. It’s the same way DC residents have chose their mayors for decades – irrespective of the candidates being unqualified to the point of being criminals.
Just browsing through the comments at my YouTube video of David Bellavia’s speech to the gathering of Vets for Freedom last Tuesday, I find adherents to the Obama doctrines nearly as disturbing as the acolytes of Ron Paul last year. Obama’s only qualification for president seems to be that he’s Black (to some degree) and somehow that qualifies his supporters as some sort arbiters of the use of our language when talking about politics.
Well, this is the bed Democrats have made for themselves and, judging by the campaign in Pennsylvania, they’re having a hard time laying in it.
