This week’s missive was originally written for The Huffington Post. I hope that, despite that elitist, liberal provenance, you will enjoy it anyway.

Race has been at issue throughout the 2008 presidential election, and particularly in the Democratic contest between Bill Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.* The tension reached its boiling point last week in South Carolina, so The Huffington Post has asked me, as an expert in racial issues, to explain to its readers exactly what happened in this past weekend’s primary.

CNN’s Randi Kaye raised, perhaps, the most intriguing question of the election when she wondered aloud, the Monday before the primary, how the black female vote would fall out. In the article, titled “Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in S.C. primary,” the news network correctly pointed out that a difficult choice faced this freakish, hybrid niche vote. “For these women,” the article points out, “a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?”

Throughout the history of this country, voters have only voted based on their race, which is why all of our presidents have been white males. Except for Rutherford B. Hayes, who was, technically, a Sasquatch. This allowed voters to focus on the issues, like who had the most impressive sideburns, and who would do the most to keep out the Chinamen. The majority of Americans are white Protestants and, except for a brief, regrettable lapse in the early 1960s, they have always voted for their own kind. (Another near-catastrophe was narrowly averted in 2004 when the Papist John Kerry was photographed windsurfing.)

So the presence of a female candidate has, understandably, confused things quite a bit. A slim majority of Americans are women, and an even larger majority of Democrats are, which would suggest that Hillary Clinton is a shoo-in for the nomination. But gender isn’t as simple as race—as I’ve learned in my extensive field research on the subject, most women hate each other. They see other females as competition for men and shoes, and therefore obstacles to their own fulfillment.

Furthermore, in an increasingly multiracial world, quandaries like that facing black women in South Carolina have multiplied. Who, after all, should a half-Hispanic, half-Black, half-Woman citizen cast their vote for?** To add to the confusion, Democratic voters have a surfeit of acceptably PC options to choose among, with a white woman, a black man, and, according to Ann Coulter, a gay man.

Nonetheless, history and logic both suggest that Hillary Clinton should have won. How, then, do we account for the fact that every single relevant demographic in South Carolina voted for Senator Obama? Simple—South Carolina voters just proved what the rest of us have known for a long time: Democrats are irrational. After all, what right-thinking American would ever vote for a candidate who will raise taxes in order to pay for recreational abortions, or who pledges to legislate mandatory sodomy?

Luckily, the Republican side offers several attractive options. Except for the Mormon… and the Italian. And the old, Immigrant-loving cripple. In any case, I think it’s clear that everyone can get behind Ron Paul.

*It has been the most racially charged primary season since Adlai Stevenson defeated Estes Kefauver for the Democratic nomination based entirely on the platform, “Estes Kefauver? Doesn’t that sound like a Jewish name to you?”

**Mike Gravel.