Oh, what a tangled web the Democrats weave these past few months. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost. Now, the latest Rev. Jeremiah Wright diatribe has Sen. Barack Obama’s  (D-Ill.) presidential campaign scrambling to contain the fallout from such a radioactive figure who has publicly endorsed both Obama and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan in their escapades. That’s quite a duo, and one I know Obama doesn’t want spread around too much.

But all this talk lately of Wright is a mere symptom of the larger problem with the Democratic Party I’ve written about before — their failure to deal with the massive undercurrent of identity politics. After all, they created this cottage industry, but they clearly don’t know how to manage it.

Just one year ago, pundits like myself were speculating how in the world Republicans would be able to cope with the racial subtexts that haunt them every presidential election cycle — that awkwardness of appealing to minority voters and visiting NAACP candidate forums, the mass exodus of Latinos from the party due to their failed immigration policies … the list went on.

And yet here we stand, ruminating not about Sen.  John McCain (R-Ariz.) being “too white” for this color-wheel country, but wondering instead if Barack can get past the argument that black preachers in black churches say the darndest things.

I have to believe that the Obama campaign longs for the days where they could play the race card on their opponents, or, better still, rise above the veiled innuendo and make Bill Clinton look foolish in the process. But those days are gone, and identity politics are back in full effect.

The sad irony here is that Barack Obama is not the biggest perpetrator of this phenomenon. Rather, it’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) who peddles this issue the hardest, for she stands the most to gain from its success. Though hers is a brand of identity politics far more subtle. You hear it in her speeches out on the hustings — the talk of how, for too long, a woman’s place was in the kitchen.

For too long, the identity politics of the 20th century dictated that sisters should bide their time; and the Oval Office was a room they could only hope to clean, never govern from. “Those days are over,” she says triumphantly. But are they? What about the same opportunities for the political advancement of the black man? Does he not count this election cycle? Should he not count? You see, to agree with the Hillary camp, to accept her premise that this is the Year of the Woman, then you must acknowledge the converse of that argument: Black men can wait.

Yes, Mr. and Mrs. America, affirmative action is dead to the senator from the great state of New York. For if it lived, if it was truly a principled centerpiece of Sen. Clinton as a liberal Democrat, then she would step aside tonight and let race-based selection work its twisted will. Think I’m saying these things just to be provocative?

Perhaps. But just look at what her surrogates have said or implied these past few months — “shuck and jive” … “if Barack weren’t black he wouldn’t be in this race…” — and consider the Clinton campaign’s ads comparing Obama to Osama. Are those the clumsy words of a desperate campaign, or calculated attacks aimed at reminding Democratic voters that Obama is a black man, Clinton is a white woman, and in 2008, the right thing to do is go with the safer color gambit and select her.

I wish I could read Hillary’s mind, but I do know this: Unless and until the Democrats deal with these identity issues and put an end to their proliferation, they’ll continue to face obscene and outmoded prospects on how their party selects its nominees for the highest office in the land.

Williams can be heard on XM Satellite Radio, Power 169, Mon.-Fri., 9 p.m. - 10 p.m. He is a regular contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog .