Race to the Bottom

by George Neumayr

Last year Geraldine Ferraro called Barack Obama's race an advantage. "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she said to a California newspaper, the Daily Breeze. "He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Now Jimmy Carter says his race is a disadvantage. Which is it?

Bill Clinton cast Obama's early primary success in the South as a Jesse Jackson-style fluke. Now the same liberals who defended Clinton against race-baiting charges attribute Obama's lack of success to racism in the South.

Carter says Americans don't think Obama is qualified to lead. So did Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. So did her feminist supporters. Gloria Steinem said Obama enjoyed an unfair racial and gender advantage over Hillary: Black males, she noted acidly, got the vote before women. George McGovern agreed, saying "I have a feeling that in this country where we're at today in our thinking, it's going to be harder to elect a woman than to elect a black man."

Read the whole article.