This sort of hand-wringing is remarkable. Here we have liberals at least heavily implying that Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary because voters 'couldn't handle' or 'weren't ready for' a woman of color. The irony, of course, is that rather than being a reflection of Trump's America, or whatever, this line of argument is actually an indictment of Democratic voters. National polls showed Harris competitive against Trump in a hypothetical matchup. She was uncompetitive against fellow Democrats, among Democrats:
MSNBC panel: @KamalaHarris faced a “double edged sword” of being a black woman.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 3, 2019
Wallace: “There is a gender piece here that we still suck at talking about."
Sharpton: “Women are held to a different standard and black women especially." pic.twitter.com/SfAb2oaDzS
At the risk of stating the blatantly obvious -- and at the risk of defending the Democratic electorate, which I'm not generally inclined to do -- do these people remember who Democrats selected as their last three consecutive nominees? A black man (2008, 2012) and a woman (2016). And if Harris were somehow at a double disadvantage among apparently-bigoted Democratic primary voters, what explains her strong rollout and major spike in support after a breakout opening debate performance? Did they forget she was a woman of color, in a moment of exuberance? Or were they actually excited by her at first, only to fall away as she bumbled her way through a healthcare policy fiasco, or after she got wrecked by Tulsi Gabbard over her opportunistic hypocrisy, or after it became more and more apparent that she was a thoroughly terrible candidate? Then there's this lamentation that's making the progressive rounds:
WATCH: @CoryBooker on the lack of diversity in the race amid Kamala Harris’ exit:
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) December 4, 2019
“We’re spiraling towards a debate stage that could have 6 people with no diversity whatsoever.” #inners pic.twitter.com/NYXQuuGQmq
"Spiraling." I guess we're just all just admitting that Warren's Native American thing is a big, fake fraud, yes? In any case, as others have noted, so long as we're obsessively tracking identity bean-counting (incidentally, Booker is almost certainly using this as a guilt trip to attract donors to reach a debate qualifying threshold), of the top four Democratic candidates who will be on stage, one is a woman, one is Jewish and one is openly gay. "No diversity whatsoever," Booker intones. Noted. I'd also like to point out how utterly absurd some of the attacks against Pete Buttigieg have gotten:
The “Buttigieg is the wrong kind of gay” attacks from progressives remain the absolute wildest nonsense of this campaign pic.twitter.com/9Wq8gPI4zx
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) December 3, 2019
I'm not exactly a fan, and have all sorts of huge problems with his worldview, but suggesting that he's insufficiently gay, or some sort of traitor, because he's done volunteer work with the Salvation Army? Ludicrous. Reducing the Salvation Army's decades of tireless work on behalf of poor and homeless people to stances on one issue, and attempting to cancel them as "homophobic" (with some success, sadly) is disgraceful. To use altruistic volunteerism as a cudgel against Buttigieg is blinkered, intolerant and desperate. But perhaps not as desperate as this:
“It’s not like proving I wasn’t born in Kenya...”
— Ryan Knight ???????? (@ProudResister) December 3, 2019
Yep, here’s video of @PeteButtigieg making a racist birther joke in 2017.
I can’t wait for white moderates to fill my mentions with excuses and harass me for sharing the truth about Buttigieg. ??pic.twitter.com/YFU86f8EHx
Imagine deciding to twist a joke he made at the expense of birthers into a critique that he made a birther joke. If this is the best they've got, maybe he's a more viable threat than they'd like to think (although his problems among people of color don't seem to be improving). I'll leave you with this, just for fun:
CNN's 2020 Power Rankings in December 2018:
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) December 3, 2019
1. Kamala Harris
2. Beto O'Rourke
3. Joe Biden
4. Cory Booker
5. Elizabeth Warren
6. Bernie Sanders
7. Amy Klobuchar
8. Sherrod Brown
9. Julian Castro
10. Kirsten Gillibrandhttps://t.co/2Dte72OLdx
