'Two White Liberal Guilts'

"People will have to choose which of America's sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?"

Whose views of the Democratic electoral process could be so blighted and narrow as to regard the contest so? None other than the New York Times' own Maureen Dowd. "As it turns out," Dowd laments, "making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history.

"With Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the historical victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts."

One must wonder how many liberal Democrats are entrapped within Dowd's nightmare. Yet Dowd appreciates that not all of America shares the bleeding-heart liberalism sundering the Democratic party: "Meanwhile, the conventional white man sits on the Republican side and enjoys the spectacle of the Democrats' identity pileup and victim lock."

The whole issue provides rich fodder for Mark Stein's new column, "Torn Between Two White Liberal Guilts," in which he confesses: "A Democrat nominating process that's a self-torturing satire of upscale liberal guilt confusions will at least give us a laugh along the way."