THE PROVIDENTIAL JOHN McCAIN:

A pink elephant could crash Dem party (Terry Michael, Feb 13, 2008, Politico)

The pachyderm I am describing is a big problem that Democrats could face if, unlike Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, a significant number of Latino participants in key Democratic primaries “see race” when they cast their votes.

Hard as that will be for the elders and matrons of the Inclusive Party to admit, it suggests a more convincing scenario for why, to date, Hillary Rodham Clinton has outpolled Barack Obama in many of the barrio precincts. The polite explanation has been that Hispanic voters love the Clintons on their “issues” — whatever those are now or were in the 1990s.

Such possible electoral manifestation of prejudice is a two-way street, of course. You would have to be blind not to have observed the black and brown gang warfare that has gone on in some of our inner cities in recent decades, the jagged tip of an ugly social-cultural iceberg.

If one of the two finalists in this history-making election had not been black but had been named Juan, a different kind of cross-racial discrimination would be the subject of this essay.

So why do I risk being hated on by my friends in the Democratic Party for bringing this up?

Well, we are about to witness bloody hand-to-hand combat for every single delegate to the convention that will be held in Denver next August. And street fighting can bring out the worst among even the most enlightened multiculti paragons of virtuous political diversity (i.e., left-liberal Democrats). [...]

All of this could have been predicted for a political party (I lament it is mine) that has been playing identity politics with a vengeance for the past several decades.

With an unfortunate focus on granting entitlements based on tribal affinity rather than celebrating the rights, liberties and personal responsibilities of individuals in a pluralistic democracy, strengthened by civic cultural assimilation, we Democrats have been courting racialist warfare for a long time.

As I tell my students, if you want to end race consciousness in America, stop being race conscious.

Despite Jeb not running, the GOP still ended up with the second best nominee for taking advantage of the Democratic fissures and appealing to a disgruntled Latino cohort.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2008 7:52 PM