Race, Gender and the Primaries

This post by Logan Murphy at C&L touches on something that's been at the back of my mind about the primaries. I thought it was just me, but maybe it's not. The press and the pundits are making a lot of noise about race and gender issues around the candidacies of Clinton and Obama. Oh, they're there (and I wonder how much of that is because of said press and pundits), but they have nowhere near the importance that the talking heads would have us believe, I think.

Matthews:”…And I have to think given the ethnic, you know, excitement - let’s call it American excitement about Barack Obama. If he doesn’t make it to the nomination a lot of people on the Republican side might say, well why don’t we try do something to offset that and take advantage of the hope of having an African American at a high level of government.”

This is wrong on so many levels, and certainly does nothing to end the media meme that race and gender are driving this primary season. Somehow, I don’t think Condi would motivate a lot of Democrats to vote for a Republican this year.

Aside from the ick factor in Matthews' statement, what's wrong is that he completely misses the point. Whatever Obama's capabilities might be as president, the point is that putting Condi Rice on the ticket is not going to magically bring minority votes to a party that is busily screwing everyone in the country who's not white or rich or preferably both.. (First of all, we know that she's incompetent.) Obama's causing excitement not because he's black and a credible candidate for president, but because he is talking about getting rid of the Bush legacy. The Republicans are all running for Bush's third term. Chris Matthews doesn't get it (of course, he doesn't get just about everything). The idea that the Republicans, who have spent most of their campaigns doing everything they can to alienate minorities, can plunk in a token black woman and make it all go away is about par for the course on media thinking. Of course, it's par for the course on Republican thinking, too.