Kennedy, Burris and Identity Politics

The withdrawal of JFK's daughter as a replacement for Hillary Clinton leads to questions about gender and race in national politics in what we all celebrated as the Age of Obama this week.

In Illinois, the future felon Rod Blagojevich appoints Roland Burris amid calls to retain the President's seat for an African-American and now, with Caroline Kennedy gone, New York's governor speaks publicly and privately about "the importance of selecting a woman to replace Mrs. Clinton."

With the critical questions facing the Senate, when and how did substantive qualifications fall behind demographics in making choices for such high office?

Blagojevich was trying to save his skin in the face of impeachment and/or indictment. Now David Paterson, an accidental governor who came to office less than a year ago when Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sexual scandal, seems to be calculating his chances for election in 2010.

Elective politics can be messy, but calculated, self-interested appointments to represent two of the largest states in the Union are clearly worse.

Roland Burris will be a caretaker choice for the next two years, and Governor Paterson would be well-advised to do the same for New York, albeit for more honorable reasons.

At the risk of being repetitive, there is an appointee who could bring wisdom and experience to the Senate until voters make their choice in 2010. His name is Mario Cuomo, and it would reflect well on New York's governor if he could rise above identity politics and name him to Hillary Clinton's seat.

McCain's Mixed Bag of VPs

As Democrats put Obama/Clinton issues behind them, the Republican identity crisis comes front and center in John McCain's decision about a running mate.

Aside from Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who may actually turn out to be the choice, the longish short list is all over the identity-politics lot:

Mitt Romney, a super-rich Mormon the candidate clearly despises, and holder of the Olympic record for flip-flopping on social issues;

Joe Lieberman, a McCain personal favorite, with the slight handicap of having run for VP as a Democrat, to say nothing of being a pro-choice Orthodox Jew, the prospect of whose presence on the ticket unsettles even the strong stomach of Karl Rove;

Tom Ridge, a pro-choice former governor with an undistinguished record as the first Homeland Security head, whose current work is sitting on the boards of Home Depot and Hershey;

Two business executives (Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina) with no political experience whatsoever but whose gender might appeal to diehard Hillary Clinton dissidents;

And even Colin Powell, who would bring racial balance and a respected military career but whose most recent public service involved helping George W. Bush lie us into Iraq and is a septuagenarian only a few months younger than McCain.

After Bush-Cheney, it's understandably complicated to figure out what enlightened Republicanism should involve this year, a problem with which McCain himself apparently wrestled after being sandbagged by Rove in 2000 when he considered switching parties himself.

If some voters have a problem wrapping their minds around the idea of Obama in the Oval Office, they may be equally bewitched, bothered and bewildered by whoever McCain chooses to be an elderly heartbeat away.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Last March 4th, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, arms linked with civil rights leaders, were reenacting the 1965 march in Selma, united in declaring their debt to the non-violence of Martin Luther King. Today, they are at the precipice of divisions that could be suicidal for their party in November.

In Obama's grasp for the nomination and Clinton's last stand in Texas and Ohio, identity politics are threatening to tear the Democrats apart--accusations against him of Farrakhan sympathies to unnerve Jewish voters, paired with countercharges that the Clinton campaign is fueling them by distributing a photo of Obama in Muslim garb. Voters are being targeted by race, gender, ethnicity, economic status and any other demographic that could prejudice them

Last March, Hillary Clinton was telling worshippers at Selma's First Baptist Church that the Civil Rights Act of 1965 today "is giving Senator Obama the chance to run for president. And by its logic and spirit...yes, it is giving me that chance.”

Before the march, Obama praised both Clintons and said of the coming political campaign, “We don’t have time for other folks to divide us.”

But the conventional wisdom of inciting demographic splits among voters has overrun those promises to bring them together in rejecting the extremes of the Bush era and attract Democrats of all stripes, along with Independents and disillusioned moderate Republicans.

Tomorrow should be the tipping point. With those critical primary prizes in the balance, will the results mark an end to the divisiveness or fuel continuing contention to give John McCain, against all logic, a chance to enter the White House as Bush Lite?

The Pox of Pigeonhole Politics

If Barack Obama has accomplished nothing else in his campaign so far, he has done us all a service by confounding the political consultants and pollsters who slice and dice voters by age, gender, ethnicity, religion, economic status, the population density of where they live and sub-categories thereof.

Unfazed by their spectacular failure in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, the identity experts appear regularly after each victory to report confidently on Obama's "progress" with younger women, blue-collar workers, Latinos, etc. to explain his march toward the Democratic nomination.

No turn of events escapes their expert analysis. In a classic gotcha, whatever they predict that turns out to be wrong is simply a new trend to be reported with confident expertise.

All this begs the question, to put it bluntly, of whether they know what they're talking about. One of the heartening aspects of the Obama campaign has been his capacity to reach across the lines that divide voters and tap into hopes that could unite them.

Each success has left Hillary Clinton's strategists scrambling for ways to stop losses among working men, shore up support among younger women, rope in straying independents and woo other perceived segments of society--a process that produces the picture of a campaign running off in all directions.

It's too much to hope that the experts will abandon their pigeonholing of voters. They will most likely respond by discovering a new demographic--true believers in the possibility of change, with subdivisions by age, gender, religion, etc.