The race for the Democratic nomination has a certain Beckettian quality to it as of late. Like the players in “Waiting for Godot,” the candidates seem to be milling around for some indeterminable end to a show that provides the audience with sundry absurdities but little worthwhile content.

Consider the episode that came to a head this week with former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a Democrat, the first woman on a major-party ticket and an advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. The former representative spoke to John Gibson on his radio show two weeks ago about the decision of Rep. John Lewis, a Georgian Democrat, to switch his support from Clinton to Barack Obama. Ferraro expressed her disappointment with Lewis and other Democrats, such as Senator Chris Dodd, for endorsing the “other” candidate. Ferraro candidly asserted Obama would not be a formidable candidate if he were not black, implying the main reason for his success in these primaries is the color of his skin.

The reaction from other Democrats was swift and predictable. Some in the media, as well as supporters of Obama, criticized Ferraro for her supposedly veiled racist comments. Ferraro stuck to her guns, refusing to apologize but eventually quitting the Clinton campaign this week amid heightened condemnation.

Despite the bluntness and, for all intents and purposes, inappropriateness of her comments, Ferraro hit on the common theme with the Democrats this election cycle: Identity politics, in which the caliber of a candidate is determined much more by his specific identity group (black or female, for instance) than by his ability to lead.

The truth is, despite all of his pontificating about rising above race, Barack Obama owes much of his success within the party to the fact that he is a black man talking about rising above race.

For liberal Democrats, obsessed with identity rather than ideas, this is the ticket to victory. By some twisted logic, Obama being black makes him a viable candidate, whereas a white man with similar views (read: John Edwards) fails to capture the electorate’s collective heart. Obama’s rhetorical skills also distinguish him from a lesser liberal, but this may be a positive externality to the overarching issue of his race.

Ironically, Ferraro’s own candidate owes practically all of her success to the same concept that she decries. The elephant in the room for the Democrats is that without Bill and, more importantly, Bill’s dalliances with the opposite sex, Hillary would not have become the sympathetic character that was elected to the United States Senate from a state she hadn’t lived in before she campaigned. The Clintons have attempted to frame Hillary’s record since 2001 as that of a politician independent of her husband’s legacy. But the appeals to her womanhood, such as her crocodile tears in New Hampshire, help to garner support for her presidential campaign, and they are a reminder that the Clintons understand identity politics. Bill was the first black president, lest we forget.

The substantial policy differences between the two candidates are interesting enough. In fact, there are very few distinctions, and on paper, Clinton and Obama may look nearly identical.

As the debates over the last year have shown, policy differences between the two are hard to come by; thus, we are subjected to despicable appeals to identity groups, particularly from the Clinton campaign, which cheapen American politics.

So the stage is set, with the first tool (Ferraro) of identity politics in a presidential election supporting a second tool (Hillary) by criticizing a third (Obama), all with no end in sight. Absurd? Most certainly, but these are the Democrats, after all. As soon as their nominee is chosen, look out for accusations that John McCain and the Republicans are racist or sexist for criticizing the actual politics of either Obama or Hillary.

The haunting conclusion of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is that the conclusion is never reached, and the absurdity is all for naught. The haunting conclusion of the Democratic primary is that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be one step closer to the Oval Office, and the politics of race and gender will live on for another day.

Mike Warren is  a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science. He is the Associate Editor for the Vanderbilt Torch. He can be reached at michael.r.warren@vanderbilt.edu and more of his work can be found at Right-Wing Vitriol, the Torch staff blog.