The '08 election

About a year ago James Carville appeared on C-Span and said that there was good and bad news about the ’08 election. The good news is the only way the Democrats can lose is to screw it up themselves. The bad news is they, the Democrats, are thoroughly capable of doing just that. He’s right of course and that’s why the apparent nomination of either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama troubles me.

Personally, I’m so completely at ease with the idea of a woman or a black person as president that, back in the day, I voted for Shirley Chisholm. But, I’ve spent my life working with white people; some very-very white people. The kind of white people who will make an extra effort to insure they, and their family members who would otherwise probably not participate, come down from the hills and empty the trailer parks to vote against a black man. That Senator Obama is half white is of no consequence to those who think blacks are inferior. As a mixed race person, who has easily passed for all white, I’ve heard those white to white conversations, the ones that were once shouted on street corners and are now whispered in private, that the slightest “taint” of black blood is the same as being all black.

The same people, the bigots I know so well, will oppose a female candidate with equal fervor. Women just aren’t tough enough. The idea that a “skirt” could effectively wield power, real power, is beyond their view of females as the bottoms rather than the tops, in their missionary position ideal concept of old testament male supremacy.

The Carl Roves of right-wing America are counting, and desperately hoping, that our race scared and religiously tortured country will again live down to it’s past and not up to it’s promise.

At other times I’d say, Fine; let’s have at it, see where we really stand. But this is a pivotal time. The next president will appoint two, maybe even three if re-elected, Supreme Court justices. If the righties with their old testament thinking, the best ideas the twelfth century can provide, make those appointments we’ll be plunged into a dark age that will take most of the new century to crawl out of; if at all.

The truth is we have a perfectly capable white male candidate, who will not only blunt the bigots; he’s also more liberal than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. John Edwards is not only the right choice, he’s the safest.