Gender, Color and Fragmented Pluralism

Woe to the Democratic Party in the United States.

Even as the George W. Bush presidency persists in laying the groundwork for selecting the next titular leader of the free world from the opposition party, that party itself (i.e. the members, leaders and candidates) has opened the door, and is in the process of perfectly machining and lubricating the hinges, that would give the Republicans twelve straight years in that white house.

"What do we want?" The first woman president! "When do we want it?" Now!

"What do we want?" The first black president! "When do we want it?" Now!

"What do we want?" A truly progressive president! "When do we want it?" Well, we really don't, and we're not even going to invite him to the debate in New Hampshire!

While the argument can be made that the Clinton and Obama campaigns will stop disemboweling each other as soon as one of them emerges as the official Democratic candidate, and the party can pray (to the extent that their liberal base allows prayer) that the loser will not feel a Liebermandate (with far worse odds than Joe had in Connecticut), it bodes unwell that many folks are focusing on first black and first woman rather than on who truly has what it takes (and yes, that deliberately avoids words like experience, hope, faith, savvy, political capital, commitment, strength, etc.) to both lead the country with integrity and clean up the diverse and inclusive mess that he or she will face.

And we haven't even mentioned the current New York City mayor yet.

Interim Apologia: In the interest of full disclosure and with a nod to gross simplemindedness, it may be easy to assume that a white guy like me can much more easily dismiss those two prospective firsts because all the presidents thus far have had sexual organs and skin pigmentation similar to mine (generally speaking, and as far as I know). Very few, if any, of them have shared my worldview, however, and if on February 5 and November 4 I believe that the best candidate for me, this country, the planet and the univation is a brownish-yellow transvestite with an eighth-grade education and an integral worldview, s/he is getting my vote. Admittedly, those specific characteristics are improbable, but I mean that metaphorically in the context of the last seven years.

Of course race and gender are essential issues. Our human world, however, is one in which brilliant intellects have consistently produced technology that the average value system and stage of moral reasoning is not yet ready to handle. Our ancestral tribes used rocks, slings, spears and arrows, and they depleted land with their hunting, foraging, and horticulture; our tribes today, be they nation-states, ethnic clans or fundamentalist believers, use bullets, bombs, chemicals, jets and nuclear weapons, and deplete natural resources with technological abandon, albeit with an ever-so-gradually emerging awareness. I don't care about the specifics of hair texture, eye shape, skin pigmentation or genitalia as long as a candidate recognizes the issues and courageously, strategically, and post-partisanally (new word!) addresses them.

What the Democrats face is the unhealthy version of the postmodern pluralism that literally made the civil rights and women's movements possible--a worldview that was not only "global" as the modern world was, especially for profit-based endeavors, but also "pluralistic" in that it recognized and honored all the lesser known stories that often did not make it into the Western male version of, well, everything. Alas, while pluralism in so doing takes a necessary evolutionary step, unless it takes the next step into universal pluralism--honoring all these stories as parts of a greater whole, it will produce the gender-, race- and ____-based (name your favorite) fragmentation that we see now with the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

Come on, you two kids, get it together. Rise above the fray. Schedule a joint press conference without your staffs, and honor each other. Then continue a robust campaign on the issues. Continue down the path you're on, and the beneficiary will be an independent or Republican candidate.

Oh, and fire whoever in your respective campaigns is responsible for fanning these divisive flames.