Democrats vs. Identity politics

Historically, Democrats have condemned Republicans for using wedge issues like gun control, abortion, and gay marriage to try and rig elections in their favor, but Republicans have their own issue in which to cry 'no fair:' Identity Politics.
During the '60's and '70's, many liberal groups pandered to minority organizations, hoping to empower them to articulate their oppression in terms of their own experience -- a definition of identity politics -- and form a more cohesive bloc against the largely white male majority that forms the more conservative Republican Party. However, after the 'affirmative action' arguments of the 80's and 90's burned out a lot of the political capital to be gained from implementing identity politics, the GOP has oftentimes succesfully pigeonholed Democrats as promoting policies that focus more on group marginalization, and less on full integration and acceptance.
President Obama largely won the 2008 election by carefully rejecting many aspects of identity politics and by doing so was able to garner a diverse coalition that helped give him the majority of the votes and the election.
Lately, however, Republicans are accusing him of not quite practicing what he has preached by nominating Sonia Sotomayor as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Some are saying that he has used her for nomination for shear political purposes, naming a Hispanic judge to the highest court in the land to shore up his own Hispanic Base (which gave him 67% of their vote), and basically dare conservatives to take the bait and attack Sotomayor more as a Latina woman, and less as a qualified or not qualified judge.
In part, the white house pushing Sotomayor's personal narrative as a poor-minority-from-the-projects-that-pulled-herself-up-by-her-own-bootstraps story has semi perpetuated this, and more and more people are becoming drawn to her biography more than they are her judicial achievements.
The only downside for Democrats to Sotomayor's nomination (who remains popular with a majority of Americans despite the revelation of inflammatory remarks she made in 2001,) has been that identity politics has once again forced Democrats to tread lightly, lest they fall into the same arguments over minority entitlement that have plagued them since the civil rights movements of the 60's. Despite the historic nomination, also, overplaying their hand could be used by Republicans to show that Democrats are once again pandering for votes from minority communities, instead of focusing on real issues and policy arguments.
Obama has promised that immigration reform is also on the table for this year, and how both sides deal with the Sotomayor nomination, will sadly draw the lines for how that debate proceeds.