Being Eaten by the Duck of Political Correctness

The Democratic Party consists of the old FDR coalition and the modern special issues groups on abortion, gay rights, antiwar (whatever one is pending), and other one-issue causes. The core constituencies have always been union workers, the elderly, minorities and urban so-called "elites." In recent times there has been a void as to a common issue or theme across these groups, accept for design of retaining or regaining power.

Image from Rush Limbaugh (April 24, 2008).

This election cycle has witnessed the unveiling of the fissures in the old FDR coalition. One group seems to have lost a place at the table altogether, the Democratic pro-free trade internationalist. Strong national defense advocates were quietly shuffled out the door over the last thirty years. Those that remain have learned to lay low or risk the Lieberman treatment. Now we have the minorities and the unions backing opposing candidates and about ready for their own war.

The dilemma that their party faces is that they have created the very nightmare that their Superdelegate rules were designed to stop: a candidate who won the party popular vote but appears destined to be a train wreck in the general election. The Democrats got here by imposing different rules based on race. Barrack Hussein Obama is the first affirmative action Presidential candidate. No one in the party or in the so-called mainstream media dared to air the problems with his past and his singularly uneventful political career because he was black.

Harsh words? Well, I guess so. When anyone makes this suggestion, as Ms. Ferraro did, they are shouted down in public, while privately everyone knows their comments are right on the money. Could a first-term white Senator with no noticeable evidence of leadership on a single issue have gotten as far as fast as Senator Obama?

Obama achieved this incredible rise to power by playing the race card every time someone suggested that he had a fault or a problem. Through surrogates or campaign memos or otherwise, any criticism about him personally being a problem was immediately viewed as racist. So everyone inside the Democratic Party had to keep a lid on the information that everyone knows makes Obama a very flawed and vulnerable candidate.

His preacher (a fact known early last year, when Obama kept him offstage), his Weatherman terrorist buddy (widely known in Chicago and not even slightly obscured), and his shady friends in Chicago business...all of this was no surprise to anyone who looked into his past. His wife's anti-American rants may have been a surprise, but remember she stayed in Chicago when he was elected to the Senate and attended Rev. Wright's circus every Sunday according to her own words.

Obama's lightweight take on the issues and leftist voting record...... widely known in Washington among every member of the Senate. In a country where voters still identify themselves as conservatives about two to one over liberals, Democrats' success in getting elected nationally has depended upon their obscuring their liberalism. Obama tries to do it; Kerry tried to do it. Obama let his liberal cat out of the bag in his San Francisco remarks.

If voters in earlier primaries had seen Rev. Wright's sermon excerpts and Michelle Obama's "never proud of America" confession, does anyone think that Obama would still have a lock on the nomination? How about the unrepentant terrorist that held a fund-raiser in his home for Obama in 1995? Talk about this candidate being part of the "blame America first" crowd is not figurative; it is the literal truth.

Finally, I have to say as someone who has been a public speaker and debater since Junior High School, I am not surprised that a self-impressed orator type of speaker, like Obama, is not good on his feet without a script. We have seen him capable of reading a teleprompter speech and reciting the single answer to a question from the briefing book. He has not demonstrated anything but ineptitude on his feet without a memorized text in his head or on the screen. This is so much a liability for him that asking tough questions is viewed as unfair or even racist by his supporters and the media (oops those are the same thing). Of course, we all knew that he had never had a tough campaign in his life, especially against a Republican who might not be as afraid to highlight the guy's weak spots.

Democrats did this to themselves. Nothing that has come out to date, the information that has polarized the Democratic Party and destroyed Obama's appeal to middle class voters, was a secret. Rev. Wright publicly sold CDs of his rants, which probably helped pay for his $1.6 million house. Ayers has been on the radio in the last year with his radical and foolish 60s syndrome. They did not see it, like every "mark" in a con game, because they did not want to see it. They wanted a charismatic new guy to make them feel good and to justify their "fuzzy-headed" conviction that they have always been right and the public was just too stupid to see it.


For some weeks now, I have been confident that the Obama train was headed for derailment. It is too late to stop him at the convention. The Democrats will never have the power to say no to the black voting block that has been their most reliable constituency. It is truly affirmative action and political correctness to a fault that has gotten them into this mess. It is no accident and no quirk. The problem that their party is in reflects the shallowness and superficiality of their mantra. In the end, they will likely do as much damage to race relations as no one could have imagined possible two years ago.

Somewhere along the road the self-avowed civil rights advocates lost the fundamental premise of color-blindness. Slowly and inevitably now, they are being devoured by their own doctrine, being eaten by a duck, awkwardly and painfully.

Randy Mott