Single Issue - Democrats as Misguided as Their Foes

In the 2004 and midterm elections, Democrats often complained about so-called single-issue voters, i.e., those who voted for George W. Bush simply because he said he was anti-abortion. Those voters happily ignored his other destructive policies and the abundant evidence that he was not at all equipped, mentally or morally, to run the country.

Cut to 2008. The selfsame Democrats who lamented the tunnel vision of Republican voters are displaying their own narrowness by choosing their candidates based on even shallower criteria than the NRA members and Right to Lifers they criticized in 2004.

Taking small notice of policies and voting records, Democrats are lining up to support the minority candidates based solely on their minority status. Barack Obama's biracialness (his mom's genes count too, folks) and Hillary Clinton's gender are, for many voters, their primary qualifications for the office of president.

So-called progressives are ignoring Clinton's longstanding devotion to corporate interests and Obama's fawning over AIPAC because, these voters feel, getting either of them elected is a good way of sticking it to the patriarchy, even though both candidates are at the very least the houseguests of the Rich-Old-White-Guy Establishment. John Edwards, also an ROWGE member, doesn't even figure in, because although his policies are far more progressive than Clinton's or Obama's, he's a boring white lawyer, the kind of guy who always runs for president and therefore one of those who should get stuck.