Live From The Democrats: Racism and Sexism

What I've been hearing from the top two Democrats in the 2008 presidential election race is that each of them wants to bring change to our country. Both of them offer promises about how they'll do that without mentioning that they're going to need cooperation from Congress to do it. But that's typical pre-election campaigning rhetoric, and we all should be used to that.

I think there's two bigger, uglier issues at work between these two candidates. Both Clinton and Obama talk a good game about uniting the country, but how exactly do they plan to do that when they use any available opportunity to accuse each other of racism and sexism.

For example, take this latest round of accusations from the Obama people to Hillary AND Bill Clinton. Hillary credited Lyndon Johnson with being responsible for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to Obama's camp, this means Hillary was not crediting Dr Martin Luther King for his Civil Rights work. Never mind that, in fact, Lyndon Johnson did sign the Civil Rights Act into law, something no other president did, and something for which Democrats have always been proud. Now, in this age of PC rhetoric, there's no such thing as a simple statement of fact because that may just be insensitive to a racial or gender group.

In an effort to save herself and Willie the embarrassment of being accused of being insensitive to Blacks (after all, how shameful is it to have "the first Black President" being accused of racism?), Hillary is willing to latch onto any issue she can use to suggest sexism. She'd make more headway with that argument if she went after Rush Limbaugh. But Obama? I don't think so.

I haven't got any predictions to make on the POTUS 2008 election because I am notoriously terrible at guessing about the future. But I will say one thing. As a news junkie, I wouldn't miss a second of coverage from any of the primary elections or the flotsam and jetsam that floats out of Chris Matthews' mouth nightly as he earnestly tries to give me his version of what's going on in the political front today. I'm especially riveted when the discussion of polls and how absolutely wrong they can be enters the picture.

C'mon. How could some trashy sitcom like Ugly Betty hope to compete with that?