Going too Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro must not be aging well. She seems to suffer from memory loss.

Ferraro, of course, came out of obscurity lately because of her comments that Sen. Barack Obama “would not be in this position” if he were white instead of black.

In 1988, she said much the same about another black presidential candidate:

“If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”

Leaving aside the question of whether Ferraro has a small point or not, let’s be honest:

Hillary Clinton “would not be in this position” if she were not a woman, specifically the wife of a president and governor.

Whatever power she wielded in Little Rock and Washington derived from her marriage.

She had accomplished nothing politically on her own until she was elected to the Senate from New York in 2000.

If her name had been Hillary Smith then, she wouldn’t have even gotten past the primary in that election.

And — mother of all points — Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984 only because she was a woman.

If she had been a male House member from New York, her name wouldn’t have been mentioned.

Overcoming barriers is hard. It doesn’t help when people say dumb things.