Does a race card trump a gender card...or vice versa?

I love it when chickens come home to roost.

For the past (almost) fifty years, Democrats have been beating Republicans around the head and shoulders with charges that their policies are either racist, sexist, or both. Imagine my delight, then, watching the junior Senator from Illinois and the junior Senator from New York going at each other with rhetorical hammer and tongs, each trying to tar the other with an -ism while attempting to remain enough above the fray to avoid a backlash.

This is simply delicious. This is identity politics as cannibalism, and will only serve to prove—if it was at all necessary—that both major contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination have tissue paper resumes and little new to contribute to the national discussion.

Even better from my perspective is this: either race or gender would be an issue difficult for a Republican nominee to counter or even address in a general election campaign, which would result in the Democrat getting a significant free pass politically. However, since the Donkeys are doing the heavy lifting here and throwing the first mud, all the Elephants have to do is point out what has already been said, and then move the conversation to questions of experience and policy.

Leave it to the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

More fun.

I watched a news broadcast a couple of days ago that gave me some insight into the enthusiasm that Senator Obama evokes in the hearts and minds of our friends on the political Left, and it appears to me to be a fairly simple proposition. When you consider the fact that his politics differ only marginally from those of old line liberals such as his colleagues Senators Kennedy, Dodd, Mikulski, and Leahy, one inevitably runs aground upon a logical, though unsettling proposition: liberals really like Senator Obama because he is black, very well-spoken, ferociously intelligent, and electable. And? He allows them to pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves on how wonderful and progressive THEY are, regardless of the Senator's lack of relevant experience.

In other words, Senator Obama is a presidential candidate who is also a symbol of civil rights in America. Which is not, necessarily, a bad thing. We need symbols, and the idea that he is a viable candidate appeals to me, too. But it certainly creates a problem with the feminist hierarchy, which was lining up to promote Senator Clinton as a civil rights symbol. Here we have a woman with a real chance to become president, and she has the poor luck to have to run against another symbol of progress.

Both are going to get roughed up in the process, and one is going to be beaten for the nomination. But I daresay that the country will be the better for it.