What does it mean that the White Guy is out?

This is a fascinating election season. On the Democratic side, the last White guy is out of the race. Don't get me wrong, I actually found Edwards to be an interesting candidate and found it compelling that he raised poverty to the forefront of his campaign. The punditry insists that people thought it was fake that a wealthy guy took on this issue - I think that poor people need wealthy allies and should take him!

So now a Black man and a White woman are at the forefront of the Democratic side. But we only talk about gender and race when these two are on the scene. Aren't White and Male race and gender? What does it mean that Republicans only run White Male candidates? Who decides what the issues are? Doesn't it seem that race is central when a rag-tag yet organized fringe (ok, I know that's oxymoronic, but it actually says what I'm thinking) of seal-the-border folk make immigration a major issue (at least for Republicans)? Isn't it White people, visibly men, who are determined to eliminate abortion in this country, downsize entitlements (now we know welfare queens are only Black women (I'm being sarcastic!)), and want to go after "Islamo-fascists"?

And yet it was a White guy who made poverty the focus of his campaign. Does the lack of support question whether people in this demographic actually should be involved with this issue? Does it mean that most Americans don't care . . . I certainly hope not. If Hillary and Obama make this a central issue, does this mean that they are making gender or race, respectively, central issues of their campaign? I suspect there are more White men in poverty than we will ever know. I know more men period are in poverty than we will ever want to admit. I hope Edwards' departure genuinely brings this to the fore of the campaign and that the same, sorry market solutions won't be trotted out to fix the problem. A girl can dream, can't she?