An Undercurrent

In the heated discussions of last night I noticed an undercurrent, a disguised one, for obvious reasons, and it is this one:

It is imperative to get the White House back from the Republicans if this country is not to be totally destroyed. The damage of the last eight years will be extremely difficult to fix, and another four years on top of that could well complete a) the emptying of the government's coffers, b) the theocratization of the United States (especially via the Supreme Court appointments) and c) the final death of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (And I'm not even mentioning all that Republican war-hungriness there.)

Given this, what is the impact of having Democratic front-runners such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the chances of winning the election? These candidates encourage the racist and sexist voters to turn up, in order to vote their racism and sexism. Is it not an empty victory to get a black man or a white woman to be the Democratic candidate if that very choice causes the Democratic candidate to lose in the general election?

Note that this is not my argument, but one which I read in several hidden forms last night. I have also seen a conservative post on this very topic earlier, a post which suggested that the Democrats are slightly crazy to try to cram down politically correct choices when they otherwise seem so close to an easy victory.

Of course the crucial bit in evaluating the relevance of these concerns is the question of the extent of racist or sexist voters in this country. They sure exist. But do they exist in numbers large enough to determine the election outcome?