At least within the ranks of the Democrat Party, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s dream is officially dead.

On Aug. 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, civil rights icon Martin Luther King declared, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Today, the absolute last thing Democrats want is for anyone to be judged by the content of their character, instead demanding everyone be judged by the color of their skin.

Then again, that isn’t entirely true. To the modern Democrat Party, the color of your skin must also be aligned with political ideology. That is why conservative blacks and Hispanics are not considered “authentic” blacks and Hispanics. In fact, because they are not also liberal/progressive means they are fair game for the most vicious, slanderous attacks.

A recent example of this comes in the form of the nomination by Barack Obama of the milquetoast, boring old white guy, Merrick Garland, to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the passing of revered originalist Justice Antonin Scalia.

Completing a progressive takeover of the Supreme Court is among the absolute highest goals for Democrats. With an entrenched progressive majority on the Supreme Court, Democrats can laugh off their string of humiliating losses in the U.S. House, Senate and state legislatures since Obama was elected. With a progressive Court majority, they could eviscerate any laws restricting abortion. They could reverse the hated Citizens United ruling and further restrict free speech with which they disagree. They could reverse the Heller and McDonald rulings which declared keeping and bearing firearms an individual right. They could force labor unions on America’s employees. The possibilities are endless.

Speaking last week at a conference hosted by race pimp and anti-Semite “Reverend” Al Sharpton, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), slated to be the next Senate minority leader with the retirement of Harry Reid, said, “A progressive majority on the Supreme Court is an imperative, and if I become majority leader [if Democrats retake the Senate], I will make it happen.”

But Democrats don’t just want a reliable vote; they want to make a political statement about the superiority of minorities. This is captured perfectly by a recent Washington Post headline: “Did Obama squander an opportunity by nominating Merrick Garland?”

The article goes on to say, “Some Democrats privately fear that Obama blew an opportunity to help re-activate the coalition that elected him twice by not picking a more progressive nominee — especially a minority candidate — to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Had Obama nominated someone who really ginned up the Democratic base, perhaps Clinton and the party would have more whole-heartedly embraced him or her.”

That fear isn’t exactly private, though, because the Post quotes Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women as saying, “I’m not going to say there wasn’t some disappointment” that Obama nominated a white guy. After the death of Justice Scalia, O'Neill and NOW signed onto a letter urging Obama to nominate a progressive black woman.

Ironically, one reason O'Neill wanted a black woman as the nominee was because “Any African-American woman who might have been nominated would have been viciously attacked. … It’s possible, if those vicious attacks would have happened, then the American public would have been much better informed of the outrageousness of what the Republicans are doing.”

We say ironically because O'Neill seems oblivious to the truly vicious attacks on conservative minorities by liberal Democrats. It seems she forgot about the treatment of black conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who suffered through grotesque character assassination at the hands of Senators Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy and others. Thomas famously referred to it as a “high-tech lynching.” In 2005, the very conservative California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, a black woman born of poor Alabama share-croppers, was subjected to similar treatment at the hands of Senate Democrats, painted as a radical and a race traitor as they filibustered her nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

To be sure, Garland would be a very reliable vote for leftists, voting consistently en bloc with the Court’s progressive wing of Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. It is nearly unfathomable that he would stray from leftist orthodoxy on issues like Second Amendment rights, abortion, affirmative action, free speech (or lack thereof), and empowering and expanding the federal government at every turn.

Yet that is not enough for progressive Democrats. Even though the end result of the judicial opinions would be nearly identical, poor Garland has two unforgivable flaws: he is a he, and he is white.

As for old white man Merrick Garland, perhaps there is still a chance to gain approval with the leftist intelligentsia and the progressive base. All he has to do is change his name to “Merry” and “identify” as a transgender black woman. That way, he’ll (oops — she’ll) have checked all of the necessary identity politics boxes favored by the scientifically challenged, anti-Constitution, progressive Left.