There's a Facebook friend in my social network, from Denver, Colorado, a man of the Left, who insists that race isn't a factor with the Left's so-called disillusionment with the President.
I disagree.
Of course, race factors into the Left's perception of the President and his performance, as much - if not more, in a different way - than it does on the Right. It was always going to factor. If Hillary Clinton had won the nomination and the election, the question of gender and her response to certain situations based on the fact that she was a woman, would always be cause for comment and speculation. Certainly, Jack Kennedy's Catholicism and its adherence to the supremacy of Rome, was a mitigating factor for some during his brief Administration.
This is a seminal Presidency, the first time an African-American is Commander-in-Chief.
Having come of age during the Seventies, when the newly-born Progressives were driving the agendae of the Democratic Party with their quest for ensuring equality through Affirmative Action, I watched, often from the sidelines, when the first woman or the first African-American man (or woman) ascended to some post or position heretofore only inhabitable in the realms of the omnipotent white male. Suffice it to say, in each instance, that the performance standard was raised just enough, to ensure that the seminal appointment would either burn out in trying to achieve a success easily achievable by his or her white brethren, or fail. Few failed. Many achieved, but at a cost.
In those days, on the Right, you had administrators who hated the thought of having to compromise their sexism or racism (or both) and who could barely contain their disdain at having whom they considered to be lesser beings in positions of responsibility and authority. Those sorts were easily recogniseable.
Worse, were the supposedly enlightened people of the Left, the ones who went out of their way to refer to any female appointee as "Ms" or who made a great show of lunching with "the black guy" and showing friendly in the office - only to shake his head and tut-tut almost reprovingly each time the slightest error was made, often rolling his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the crew, the action wordlessly admitting, "See, I told you so. Have to show them everything."
And so they would hover. And explain. And assume. And breathe a sigh of relief when the woman or "the black guy" would move to a different department or job. Or he'd seethe silently, if such person deservedly got a promotion he had perceived to be his and his alone.
You can see this now.
