Forget all the pussyfooting around to mollify a shrinking minority of fence-sitting white "independents" that couldn't save Hillary Clinton's campaign either.

It's way past time for Democrats to quit triangulating on their core values. It's really not about Rand Paul. It's about supporting the principle of civil rights for all and criticizing those who don't support civil rights, or those who play politics with civil rights, or those who think like you apparently do that political triangulation counts more than the simple principle: in America in 2010, we believe that the right of all citizens to do business together without racial barriers is the foundation of a healthy economy and human rights too.

We can banter all we want about the literal definition of "racist" and whether we apply it to Rand Paul. What it comes down to is...what does this party stand for? What do we, as individual so-called Democrats and liberals, stand for? I think the biggest problem in the Democratic party is the refusal to stand for a core value - and that's not just a political problem, that's an ethical problem. Personally, I stand wholeheartedly for racial tolerance. I give full respect and unqualified support to the hard-won legal changes that have given this country hope for ending racism, and I'm not going to water down this core belief to accommodate Rand Paul sympathizers. Political expediency only goes so far - at the other end of political expedience is moral bankruptcy.