This approach colored American liberals' view of diversity — race, gender, etc. as proxies for political liberalism — which they began enforcing across the nation everywhere they held power. Anyone who opposed the quota mentality this approach fostered was accused of racism, sexism, ad nauseam (that is, hit with the respective trump cards). It was tidily done, disposing of their criticisms without even having to touch on the challenge that diversity ought to include diverse ideas.

It worked until this campaign season. Both parties field arrays of candidates exhibiting their approaches to diversity. Republican candidates differ on the proper roles of government, differ widely in religious belief (frontrunners include a Catholic, a Mormon, and a Baptist), but they all happen to be white men. Democrats have nearly indistinguishable philosophies of government but are a mix of races and genders.

Of the Democrat frontrunners, Obama holds the race card, Clinton the gender card, while John Edwards is left trying to play a class card. Supporters of each are struggling against the new reality that the favored old disqualification tack doesn't work, since they're all liberals. Trying to navigate this awkward political reality without dashing the diversity canards has led to moments of high comedy: Young arguing for Clinton being "as black as Obama," Michelle Obama touting her husband as a better candidate for women than Clinton because he's "a man comfortable with strong women in his life," and John Edwards' supporters touting him as potentially the "first woman president."

A revelation of Edwards' bona fides as a black woman seems inevitable. In the meantime, suffice for it to say that American liberals have some very strange ideas about race and gender.