Few things could be more damaging to American political culture than the polarization by race and gender that has characterized the Democratic party this year as it chose between a white woman and a black man.

Political activists have accused women not voting for Senator Clinton or African-Americans not voting for Senator Obama of being traitors or even Uncle Toms. Well-meaning, often first-time voters gush that it has been exciting that at last they could choose either a black or a woman. Often there has been no mention or little thought to whether that person is honorable or qualified.

Instead, race and gender have emerged as credentials of their own. That is exactly what true American liberals have long opposed.

The undemocratic processes of the Democratic party, normally confined to urban political machines like Chicago’s, have been enhanced this year by the party’s manipulations in Florida and Michigan, and in the cynical system of superdelegates. Many superdelegates are professional political insiders or paid campaign staffers who have never been elected in any open process. Why should Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s daughter or Hillary Clinton’s political strategist have more votes than thousands of New Hampshire voters? The 823 superdelegates, which represents about 40% of the total delegates required to win the nomination.

The central purpose of the superdelegate system is to reduce the role of the delegates who are chosen by the voters. The caucus states aggravated this anti-democratic bias with making residents vote publicly and with the difficulty of transportation to the polls. Why is today’s Democratic Party so afraid of what we used to call proudly an “open convention”?

Now, with the brokering of superdelegates the selection process of the Democratic candidate is managed in the “smoke-filled back rooms” we used to deplore. No wonder Mrs. Clinton complained that in the more equitable Republican process she would have won the nomination.

Having served as Robert Kennedy’s New York campaign coordinator in 1968, the year in which he and Martin Luther King Jr. gave their lives trying to bring our country together; having volunteered for Ed Koch when he ran against Tammany Hall; and having campaigned for Charles Evers when he was the first black man since Reconstruction to run for governor of Mississippi, I come from a generation of lifelong Democrats that tried to do things differently — Senator Lieberman calls himself and these Democrats “Independent Democrats.” Like Harry Truman, we believe that America must have a robust foreign policy and a productive but fair domestic system, not international withdrawal and domestic statism.

The Democrats now agitating for undefined “change,” however, seem to yearn for a government that is too weak abroad and too strong at home. They seem to believe that despising President Bush is a foreign policy in and of itself. Like Senators Reid and Pelosi, too many of them prematurely claimed we had lost the war that they have done their best to make impossible to win. The Democratic nominee has stated that the Iraq war already has been lost. Despite this falsehood, Mr. Obama declares that it is the president who has misled our country.

Although he has the most extreme voting record of any senator of his party, the Democratic candidate claims to be a figure of reconciliation. Though he is the product of the most enduring corrupt city government in the country, he poses as the candidate of reform. His long-time financial backer, Antoin Rezko, has just been convicted of 16 counts of felony corruption charges. For 20 years he has associated himself with a racist preacher.

Worse, the voting abuses that were formerly characteristic of the unreformed Dixiecrat South now have been adopted by Mr. Obama’s supporters in the north. With an 84% black population, the mayor of Gary, Ind., hoping that his county would put Mr. Obama over the top with elected delegates, bused entire classes of high school seniors to special early voting places at the public’s expense for the Indiana primary.

How should our other party respond to these divisive politics? An honorable and experienced candidate by any standard, Senator McCain must confront a wave of enthusiasm fueled by this unhealthy divisiveness and by valid discontent with the government.

Harry Truman used every available weapon to win one war, and he fought the Cold War vigorously in Greece, Berlin, and Korea. Like Jack Kennedy, Mr. McCain is a patriotic naval officer who advocates cutting taxes and building up our armed forces. That still is the correct program for the Democratic Party and our country.

Mr. Bull, a former publisher of the Village Voice and civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, has worked in many Democratic campaigns in different states.