Geraldine Ferraro is the last person in American politics who should be lashing out at identity politics benefitting Barack Obama. Before resigning from an auxiliary fundraising position on the Clinton campaign, the former representative from Queens observed: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
Maybe, maybe not. Senator Obama is a very intelligent, charismatic, and articulate spokesman for the liberal cause. Sure, he's a political Music Man, but the Democrats have often swooned for the Harold Hills as their Republican counterparts have snoozed to the Gerald Fords, Bob Doles, and, yeah, John McCains.
What, other than being a woman, inspired Walter Mondale to select her as his vice presidential nominee in 1984? She had been in the House of Representatives for six years in 1984. Barack Obama has been in the Senate for four years. Whereas more than half the electorate are women, about ten percent are black. Numerically, there does not seem to be a whole lot of advantages for Obama there. Couldn't Ferraro's argument be applied just as readily to Hillary Clinton? If Obama's race does benefit him--I'm not convinced that as a whole it does--what does this do to the argument, made incessantly by liberals like Geraldine Ferraro, that racism still flourishes in America?
This is the Democratic Party the Geraldine Ferraros and Bill Clintons of the world made. It's a political organization built on identity politics and stoking the grievances (real and imagined) of women, minorities, and the poor. It's fitting that the monster has finally turned on its creators.
I'm pretty sure that, in the course of defending her comment about Obama, Ferraro admitted that she was only chosen to be on the ticket because she was a woman.
Ferraro’s point is right on the money. She was right about 84’ when she was selected as Mondale’s running mate and she’s right about Obama in 08’. If Obama were white and his name was John O’Brien, former Illinois state legislator and one term U.S. Senator with no record of accomplishment, he would not be short steps from ascending to the Presidency of the United States.
That said, it can’t be denied that Obama and his team have made the best of their opportunities. But in 2008 America, color opened to door for Obama and he has benefited by getting a majority of the minority vote and by getting the vote of many white liberals who are either soothing their white guilt or who are just looking to ‘feel good’ about themselves and their elevated sense of nobility by supporting the minority candidate.
Do you think that anybody will care that the saintly self-righteous Barack HUSSEIN Obama is lying about his relationship with an Afro-centric, anti-American, anti-Semitic, socialist racist?
