Victims of Their Own Political Correctness

In today's politically correct world, one cannot accuse a minority of gaining their position as a result of affirmative action. Well, if you want to be called a racist, go for it. But since "racist" is the modern day equivalent of "witch" in 1692 Massuchessets, it's no wonder people in polite society refrain from the accusation.

In theory, affirmative action is a fine idea - provide opportunities to minorities that, due to social prejudices, were unavailable to those groups in the past. In application, however, affirmative action was less than perfect; kind of like communism - in theory, it works. Ultimately, affirmative action, in some cases, put unqualified people in positions, and some of those unqualified people failed miserably at their job / education. Sure, qualified people fail as well, but the chances of failure increase significantly when the person is unqualified, regardless of minority / majority status.

And that brings us to Barack Obama. The man is flat-out unqualified to be President of the United States. I'm not going to say that he is where is he because of affirmative action. But, at the same time, I'm not disagreeing with Geraldine Ferraro and Bob Johnson when they say that Barack is where he is due in large part to his race.

With Barack's lackluster performance at the Philadelphia debates, the San Francisco bitter comments, and his absolutely horrendous handling of the Jeremiah Wright crisis, several Democratic party members and leaders are questioning just how capable is Barack in a general election.

If you go on Real Clear Politics' numbers, Hillary has a larger lead in a McCain match up than Obama does. Most pundits (Democrat and Republican) are in agreement that this Wright thing is going to get much worse before it gets better (it may even last through the general election). So if Obama continues to have slip-ups and really looses favor with the electorate, will the Democractic super delegates give the nomination to Hillary?

Personally, I maintain that the DNC has painted itself into a corner. With his promises of hope and change, Obama excited a good number of people. The problem was that no one, even the most passionate of his supporters, really knew who Obama was - as a man or politician. Now that the shiny new-Obama shine has faded, we see that he really is no different than every other politician out there. But he has won enough delegates to be the logical choice for the nomination.

Hillary, on the other hand, is strengthening her argument that she is more electable than Obama. If the DNC super delegates give the nomination to her, a Democratic mutiny is a very real possibility as is a number of Obama supporters staying home and not voting in protest, thus cutting into Hillary's chances of winning the general election.

In part, this entire situation stems from the Democratic party's desire to have it all. It's a politically correct wet dream to have both a woman and a black man contending for the title of First [fill in the blank with the appropriate minority title] President. If Bill Richardson would have been able to stick it out and capitalize on the Hispanic vote, there's no telling where the nomination process would be right now.

The only problem is when you pit two minority groups against each other (women vs. blacks, in this case), polarization is inevitable, and when you slight one group in favor of the other, it only fuels the racist / sexist charges. At the end of the day (or at Denver in August, if you want to get technical) the DNC is going to have to make a very non politically correct choice, and that is a liberal's worst nightmare. Well, that and a sudden repeal of the 22nd Amendment.