The Embarrassing Democrats

A reader writes:

Watching the Democrats self-immolate during this election, which should have been a slam-dunk for the party, has really made me question its abiity to lead this country at all, ever again. If someone, anyone, could explain to me how this party is fit to lead, please, let them explain. From its ineffectual performance in Congress since the midterms to its fratricidal primary warfare, the Dem party seems determined to prove that it has outlived its usefulness. Now, gifted with a candidate who represents a new start for the future–who offers an attempt to show the country how we can at least attempt to transcend the most divisive elements of racism, prejudice and partisanship (no, not get rid of them completely, but at least kick them a ways to the curb in the name of progress and solving this country’s very serious current challenges), it has instead chosen a fight to the death to re-install a desperate, discredited monarchy that is taking refuge in the last century’s cultural and identity wars.

What the hell?

And where is the party’s leadership? Cowering in the shadows. Unlike the Republicans, who are at least attempting to unite around their candidate and present a grown-up face–and whose candidates were Emily Posts compared to the Clintons in their effort to maintain some of the party’s dignity during the primaries–too many Dem leaders are standing around watching this ridiculous spectacle hands in pockets.

Gore? Edwards? Biden? Richardson? If they really backed the Clintons they’d have said so by now, but rather than come out and stand up for the future, they’re hedging their bets. Hoping for Cabinet posts? The Republican drop outs, meanwhile, immediately moved to unity, endorsing McCain quickly.

Dems will say this is healthy. Democracy is messy! Oh, please. Maybe it WAS healthy. Now it’s just nuts. No offense to the Palestinians, but you know that saying that "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?" Well, the Dems have become the Palestinians of U.S. politics.

This election will signal the end of my identification as a Democrat. I’ve had it. And I can’t imagine I’m alone in thinking and feeling this way. Can’t the party see this?

A Sociopath On Air

A reader writes:

If you did not hear Clinton’s interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR this morning, be sure to give a listen. It shattered my Obama optimism.

Inskeep gave her several of the hard questions you write about every day, and she parried every one. She sounded — not was, but sounded — rational, logical, sensible (Obama-like?) in explaining why the MI and FL delegates should be seated, and denying she ever said McCain was more qualified than Obama. Some of her answers were such whoppers that Inskeep actually repeated the questions, his voice rising with incredulity.

The woman is an absolute assassin. Ice water in her veins. A second-generation terminator (yeah, the liquid-metal kind). As a politician, I fear she is light years ahead of Obama, and I am very, very afraid.

Time For A Mickey Spat

Mickey Kaus claims that my Atlantic essay making the case for Obama is essentially the same as Ferraro’s racist comment. But clearly, my case for Obama is rooted in his ability to transcend race, reframe our foreign policy, overcome the divisions of the boomer era and cast a new moderate light on our religious divisions. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to read the piece – written when Obama was twenty to thirty points behind and given no chance against the inevitable Hillary – and think it was saying that the only reason Obama has been succeeding is because he’s black or that the primary reason for his candidacy is his race. My point is that his complicated ethnic and international heritage makes him very well suited to project America’s soft power to the world, if he becomes president, as well as helping to represent the next generation, whose views of ethnicity, race and identity are much more complicated than their parents’. My deeper point is that Obama’s virtues as a politician – his ability to unite, his capacity for reason, his solid judgment and even temperament – have nothing to do with race at all.

To argue, as I did, that this mastery of complexity is a new and positive thing in our politics is obviously not the same thing as echoing Ferraro’s racial and gender resentments about Obama’s beating Clinton in the primaries. To argue that a teenager in Lahore would get this message instantly from Obama’s face if he were president of the United States is not to say that Obama’s candidacy is only successful because he’s black. The most important point that teenage would get is not about Obama but about America: that we are not bound by racial or religious animosity, but open to all. And it would reflect Obama’s capacity to transcend his race rather than exploit it.

Of course, Obama’s race is a salient issue. We’re human. Obama’s skill has been in not denying that but in not exploiting it either for the purpose of identity politics. I guess this complicated point is lost on some, like Mickey. But I’m guessing others see what I’m arguing.

The GOP’s Immigration Head-Fake

Ross notes:

Americans want border security and they want a lower immigration rate; what they don’t want is to feel like they’re being asked to vote for “Operation Wetback, Part II.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any Republican politicians who actually believe in the moderate-restrictionist position. Instead, there are politicians who make restrictionist promises they don’t intend to keep in the hopes of keeping the yahoo vote appeased, and politicians who sound like, well, yahoos themselves.

Larison, for his part, blames the moderates:

In theory the “enforcement-first” bloc, the second on this list, is the “moderate restrictionist” position, but as a matter of intra-party politics the pro-amnesty forces have pushed together enforcement-first and all other restrictionists and deliberately try to obscure the differences between all positions to their right.