Race v. Gender again...

Katrina vanden Heuvel on Morning Joe. Got a little hot in there weighing race against sex. Pretty interesting.

I really think, at the end of the day, she's just a bad candidate. The question isn't "Will the country elect a woman for president?" as much as its "Which woman will the country elect for president?" There is an implicit sexism in that query, when you note the fact that George Bush got elected to two terms. No woman as incurious and inarticulate as George Bush could even be elected class president. The game is rigged, no doubt. But if you want to win, you've gotta find ways around.

As I said before, Branch Rickey couldn't just snatch any old baseball player out of the Negro Leagues--even if he was a great player. He had to get the perfect one. It was not enough for Martin Luther King to demand equal rights from white America, he had to use nonviolence to demonstrate a level of moral superiority to his oppressors. Obama would be well within his rights to say, "Why do I have to answer for bigots who have no affiliation to my campaign, but John McCain doesn't have to answer for the bigots who are featured on his campaign's website?" But if wants to win, that would be stupid.

At some point, you have to decide whether you're trying to win, or whether you're just trying to even the score. Sexism is a given in any campaign in which a woman is running for president. But are you running to highlight and point out that sexism? Or are you running to overcome it and win? Any candidate who would choose the former would get destroyed in the general election. Thank God this will be over soon. McCain would run over Hillary with a truck.