Voting for Someone Based on Qualifications is "Very White"

According to Whoopi Goldberg on The View.

Newsbusters has the whole, contorted transcript, but, in a nutshell, Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd tell Elisabeth Hasselbeck that she's always had presidents that looked like her but they haven't.

I don't like Hasselbeck. I think she's too polite and let's the lefies hold sway. And this idea that a white man as president is "someone who looks like me" shows that, for black people, race is more important than gender.

The key difference in viewpoints is that Hasselbeck (and women like me) want to vote based on qualifications, not identity politics. Why? Because if our vote is only based on immutable characteristics like sex and race, someone will always be left out. Where is the Hispanic voice crying because there's not been a president who looks like them? Or the Asian? Or the disabled?

Voting based on identity creates more divisions than unity. That's why Barack Obama tried early to downplay race; he knew that to win over more white voters, he had to be a "different kind of black candidate." He's allowed people like Goldberg and Shepherd to see his candidacy in terms of his race while allowing white supporters to look beyond his race.

Unfortunately for Obama, the emphasis from the Left on identity politics will destroy their candidate. Most Americans would love to break the color barrier for the presidency. They just want to decide that race isn't the reason they are voting for someone.