Something strange happened during this lengthy primary season. The question who will be the best wartime president of the United State has become secondary to the question who is most able to break the presidential glass ceiling for a particular group? Hillary said:

This election is a turning-point election. And it is critical that we all understand what our choice really is. Will we go forward together, or will we stall and slip backwards?

 

Now, think how much progress we’ve already made. When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions. Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief? Well, I think we answered that one.

Not really. The opposite is true. Hillary supporters are left with the question how did she lose to this guy? After all, no one can argue that he is better (if at all) qualified to be commander in chief.

She went on:

Could an African-American really be our president? And Senator Obama has answered that one.

Did he?

Together, Senator Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union.

In other words, the real purpose of American elections is to elect president from identity group which have not yet had a chance to serve as president. After all, to be an American president is just another job to which it is right and proper to apply affirmative action criteria.

Perhaps so, the tragedy for Hillary is that women, unlike Blacks, have proven time and again that they put gender second. Just as adding a woman to the ticket has not help Mondale get elected, being a woman did not help Hillary become nominated. It actually hurt. In other words, rather than helping break the glass ceiling for women, her candidacy cemented it.

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