Geraldine Ferarro has resigned from Hillary Clinton's campaign because she's been mugged by her fellow Democrats for daring to note the obvious: Barack Obama is where he is in the contest for president largely because of his skin color. Why anyone should think this is offensive, or even mistaken, is beyond me, but even Sean Hannity was saying yesterday afternoon that he thought it was incorrect and insensitive. What's wrong with people?
Obama has made it this far against Senator Clinton largely on the basis of overwhelming black support and the votes of white Democrats eager to vote for a credible black candidate in order to innoculate themselves against any future charge of racism. Does anyone really think that an inexperienced first-term white senator with Obama's same charisma would have attracted so many African-Americans to his side? Does anyone seriously believe that a white male candidate, other things being equal, would have gotten so much support from the MSM against Hillary Clinton?
We are a nation afraid to talk openly about race. We're cowed into refusing to say things that everyone knows to be true but which are guaranteed to gain one the opprobrium of the speech Nazis who preemptively censor all unapproved mention of race. Almost any reference to race in our society - unless accompanied by a truckload of qualifiers, demurrals, and clarifications - risks being interpreted as "racist". This is quite bizarre and a symptom, I think, of some sort of national psychosis. It's certainly not intellectually mature or honest.
Why should people pretend that race hasn't played a critical part in the presidential contest? We're certainly not skittish about observing that gender has been a prominent factor. Blacks are turning out in large numbers and Obama is taking 90% of their votes. That phenomenon has largely propelled him into contention, and to avoid seeing that requires a kind of willful contortionism at which liberals seem to be quite skilled.
Geraldine Ferarro made a perfectly reasonable observation, and she's been forced to resign because what she said offends foolish liberal conventions. We might well ask in what sense are the people who think it racist to mention the advantage Obama's color has conferred upon him "liberal" in any classical sense of the word?
RLC