Neither Clinton nor Obama, but this

Clinton, merely because she happens to be a woman? Or Obama, merely because he happens to be black? Well, why not combine the two and draft Condoleeza Rice as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States? Or have I missed something?

Clinton failed to deliver health care reform. But that administration did give the American working class NAFTA and GATT, and it dismembered Yugoslavia in the interests of various Wahhabis and Holocaust-deniers.

As for Obama, he is not an African-American, one of the descendants primarily of West African slaves (though also of their masters), with a highly distinctive culture which produced, among much else, the Civil Rights Movement. Obama might be black, but he is not black like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. For that matter, he is not black like Alan Keyes, Clarence Thomas or Condoleeza Rice. And that is what makes Obama acceptable to the Democratic Party grandees.

The Democrats should instead be consolidating their electorally successful return to their party’s socially conservative, economically populist, patriotic, Christian roots, inimical to neoconservatism on all four counts, and most numerously exemplified by African-Americans and the electorally decisive group that is orthodox Catholics.

Specifically, the Democrats should be down on their knees begging Jim Webb to run. And they should be out finding him a socially conservative, economically populist, anti-war running mate who is either a churchgoing African-American or an orthodox Catholic (easy), and preferably both (also perfectly feasible).

Failing that, why vote Democrat at all? John McCain, like the wounded and decorated Jacques Chirac, might look dreadful on television. But, in telling contrast to the draft-dodging Bill Clinton and George Bush, he is extremely unlikely to go shooting up the world. Even if, in common with Jim Webb, he does have the misfortune to be a white man.