The Democrats’ presumptive candidate for president is not black enough, nor feminine enough, nor Hispanic enough to represent a real change in American politics.

Analysis by Mike Gray

At present we have two males running for the office of President of the United States. Now, if we are to have a truly representative government in the modern sense of having a wide variety of types of people all representing basically the same political points of view (government=good, liberty=evil), this situation is obviously already skewed in the wrong direction. One of the two parties should immediately field a woman as a Presidential candidate.

Let’s look at the facts, according to the National Atlas entry on the subject:

According to Census 2000, 281.4 million people were counted in the United States—143.4 million of whom were female and 138.1 million male.  The former made up 50.9 percent of the population, compared with 51.3 percent in 1990.

The figure of 50.9 percent is, for all practical purposes, a split down the middle—one guy for every gal—thus my call for a female candidate post-haste. It has also pleased the politicos to run a "person of color" this time around. This individual describes himself as "black" every chance he gets, despite the fact that he isn’t fully black, as his Wikipedia entry notes:

Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a White American from Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while both were attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama’s father returned to Kenya and saw his American-born son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.

Despite Census Bureau figures estimating that blacks constitute 13 percent of the U.S. population, some would argue that it’s only fair that we should have a black President this time around; after all, he would be representing 100 percent of all black people, right? (But would that be only 50 percent of the time? Inquiring minds want to know.) This mind-roasting paradox drove Jason Carroll to the following musings on CNN’s American Morning:

Barack Obama is touted as the nation’s first major party black candidate for president.  Obama identifies himself as black, but his parentage is biracial…. With a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, Obama is the nation’s first biracial candidate for president. The media, however, have continually called Obama the nation’s first major party ‘black candidate,’ saying he could make history as the first ‘black president.’ But is that accurate?… A columnist examining Obama’s background summed up his racial identity into one equation: white + black = black. For me, that said it all. There are some who point out Obama is just as white as he is black. He may be the nation’s first black president, but he would also be the nation’s 44th white president."

This issue of race has already been used to political advantage in the campaign, and will doubtlessly be used again and again—if Obama does get sworn in next January, we’ll probably never hear the end of it. Meanwhile, Carroll plumps for a questionable conclusion based on no observable evidence but redolent of political correctness:

This is a debate that will continue as we watch the presidential race. It seems with an issue like this there’s no right or wrong answer.

Sorry to disillusion you, Jason, but almost all "issues" do have right or wrong answers; that’s why they’re issues in the first place. What is needed is to find the answers.

This takes us back to our starting point, the pursuit of a more equitable representation of ethnicity, sex, and the like. Here Obama fails on another count. The Census Bureau, theoretically a neutral government agency but in actuality not so, proudly informed us in 2005 about what has become known as "the browning of America"

Population: 41.3 million

The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2004, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest race or ethnic minority. Hispanics constituted 14 percent of the nation’s total population. (This estimate does not include the 3.9 million residents of Puerto Rico.)

1

Of every two people added to the nation’s population between July 1, 2003, and July 1, 2004, were Hispanic.

102.6 million

The projected Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2050.  According to this projection, Hispanics will constitute 24 percent of the nation’s total population on that date.

This was in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month:

In 1968, Congress authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to proclaim a week in September as National Hispanic Heritage Week. The observance was expanded in 1988 to a monthlong celebration (Sept. 15-Oct. 15). During this month, America celebrates the culture and traditions of U.S. residents who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Sept. 15 was chosen as the starting point for the celebration because it is the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on Sept. 16 and Sept. 18, respectively.

Incidentally, why are we celebrating Costa Rican, El Salvadorian, Guatemalan, etc., cultures with taxpayer money instead of emphasizing America’s traditions? I don’t remember voting on that.

As you can see, with "Hispanics" (an umbrella term that could even be stretched to include the President-for-Life of Libya) reproducing at their current rate, you don’t have to be a Karl Rove to figure out the political implications of 102.6 million potential voters by 2050.

So we must conclude that Obama is not only woefully estrogen-deficient (except perhaps in his foreign policy) but also not brown enough. If the Democrat Party truly wishes to honor its stated commitment to represent all of the people, it can and should steal the Republicans’ thunder by offering a 100 percent black, 100 percent woman for President and a 100 percent white, 100 percent man for veep.

I shall not comment on the difficulty the latter might present for them.

—Mike Gray