HILLARY HUFFS: The unannounced presidential candidate is busy letting various groups within the Democratic Party's learned-helplessness constituency know she's very much on their side. Declaring herself a champion of Brown v. Board of Education (as if that ruling were somehow at risk), Hillary's taken to warning that Bush's judicial nominees will overturn the civil right movement.

"What we are experiencing today is a real movement to turn the clock back on the rights of Americans."

The idea is laughable on its face. Equal opportunity for minorities and women is now the law of the land. But Hillary's strategy is to imply that equal opportunity and equal results are the same, without saying so directly. Heather Mac Donald nails the deception:

These diversity grievances follow the usual logic: Victim-group X is not proportionally represented in some field; therefore the field's gatekeepers are discriminating against X's members. The argument presumes that there are large numbers of qualified Xs out there who, absent discrimination, would be proportionally represented in the challenged field.

The contemporary Democratic Party, seemingly bereft of new ideas, has been reduced to scaring one after another of its core constituencies: seniors, women, blacks especially. It was easier to accomplish this in the days before the 24/7 news cycle, the days when the MSM could steer the national agenda left without fear of contradiction. These days there's a big complication: talk radio in general, Rush in particular. And of course the all-powerful "right-wing spin machine" over at Fox. Even so, don't sell Hillary short. A case can be made that the right Democratic candidate could be strong in 2008. I personally believe Hillary brings too much baggage to be electable, but don't forget that the voters who will be between ages 18 and 30 in 2008 were between 10 and 22 when the Clinton White House scandals were in public view. Hillary's depending on them to take her as she presents herself in 2008, without reference to her past. She's also looking at studies showing that America's rising immigration tide could turn three or four red states blue.