Senator Jim Webb, often mentioned in those breathless silly season columns on potential running mates, has managed a quadruple-play, offending at least four groups with this comment on racial polarization within the Democratic primary:

“We shouldn’t be surprised at the way they are voting right now,” said Webb in an interview with MSNBC. “This is the result of how affirmative action, which was basically a justifiable concept when it applied to African-Americans, expanded to every single ethnic group in America that was not white. And these were the people who had not received benefits and were not getting anything out of it.”

Let’s count up the objections: 1) Supporters of affirmative action reject the notion that whites have legitimate grievances about race-based programs; 2) Hispanics and Asian Americans will love the notion that they are less deserving of the preferences doled out to African Americans; 3) Opponents of race-based preferences will ask why Webb thinks treating citizens by race (apparently only one group) is “a justifiable concept”; and 4) All those people who voted against Obama for reasons having nothing to do with race or affirmative action won’t like being labeled resentful–if not bitter. (I may have missed a few.)

It’s so nice to see how this campaign has moved us into a post-racial state of bliss.