Last year began with such high hopes for the Democratic Party leading into the 2020 elections. The party of diversity saw great front-liners for the Presidential election – men and women of all ethnicities and backgrounds vying for the White House. Many believed that this would finally be the election that would reflect America’s rapid shift towards a majority-minority population.
Well, yesterday left everybody wondering what exactly happened. As of last night’s Debate in Iowa, America saw the DNC’s six remaining candidates take the stage. Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and billionaire Tom Steyer. Notice an alarming pattern? They’re all white.
After nearly three decades of the Democratic Party claiming to hold the mantle of the party of minorities, the 2020 election has come down to six white candidates, with the most “minority” of them arguably being Pete Buttigieg, America’s first gay Presidential Candidate from Indiana’s own South Bend. The embarrassing and concerning outcome for the Democratic Party also opened up derision from the Republican Party, who at least had 50% minorities when their 2016 elections came down to the final six (Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are of Cuban descent, and Ben Carson is African-American).
Julián Castro, the youngest city councilman in San Antonio history and the former Secretary of HUD. Kamala Harris, the former hard-hitting attorney general and district attorney turned-California Senator (who it turns out was definitely not as progressive on crime as she claimed in the early days of her campaign). Cory Booker, the legendary civil rights activist and former Mayor of Newark, as well as the first African-American Senator from New Jersey – the same man who in 1998 went on a 10-day hunger strike and lived in a tent to raise awareness for the homeless and drug-infested streets of Newark. These champions of civil rights and minority representation could not make it more than two weeks into 2020.
Even Andrew Yang, who is technically not out of the race yet, could not generate enough “support” to qualify for last night’s debate. Although strangely enough, according to TwitterGov, Andrew Yang was the fourth-most tweeted about Democratic candidate last night – ahead of both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, despite not actually being at the debate. In response to this, the Washington Examiner professed Yang the winner of last night’s debate without even having to attend it. Legendary.
How did the people who just a few months ago the DNC boasted were exactly what it would take to defeat Trump, generate so little support and excitement among Democrats? The Democratic Party wasn’t excited about possible electing the first Hispanic President, or the first African-American female President? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around how that’s possible.
As is to be expected, the DNC is having trouble with it as well, and the blame game has begun en masse. Many on the Left have taken to social media in the past 24 hours, revealing their outrage over the party’s lack of a nonwhite presidential nominee. Leftists across America, including politicians and DNC operatives, are suddenly discussing just how racist the Democratic Party and main-stream media is. CNN, which became known sarcastically as Clinton News Network during the 2016 election due to their lack of subtlety regarding which candidate they supported (although Fox News is certainly not innocent of that either…) is now maligned by both sides after being accused of purposefully under-representing minority candidates, and even worse, skewing questions against Bernie Sanders at last night’s debate.
Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA 13th District), said:
“It didn’t just happen…Systematic racism permeates everything in this country. I think Democrats are doing some soul-searching right now…I don’t know if white Democrats are really stepping up and looking at how the system is biased and prevents others from coming through.”
Back in November, Julián Castro also noted his views of media bias and a party primary system that gives predominantly white states, namely Iowa and New Hampshire, what he believes is far too much power in the early stages of the primaries.
However, Lee’s and Castro’s claims raise a huge question: what about the minority voters in the Democratic party? There are estimated to be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote in 2020 – and yet Castro never gained more than 2% in national polls. Despite being a party-favorite for a significant portion of 2019, Kamala Harris wasn’t able to generate enough support from America’s nearly 30 million eligible African-American voters. Of all the candidates still standing, a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 48% of African-Americans favor Biden, and 20% favor Sanders, leaving the other candidates trailing behind.
Now that 2020 has finally come, the Democratic Party has only 11 months to gain enough support for one of their remaining candidates to have any hope of winning the Presidency. The concerns of African-Americans and Latinos are very real: how can they expect their concerns to be taken seriously when neither party is fielding a minority candidate for 2020?
Of the last six, Elizabeth Warren, sitting in 3rd place, is currently dealing with her own problems after accusing Bernie Sanders of saying that a woman could not win the 2020 election. Bernie supporters took to Twitter after last night’s debate, trending “#neverWarren” and using snake emojis to attack the Massachusetts senator as a liar. The Democratic Party watches in anticipation as their 2nd and 3rd place candidates enter a humongous feud just four months before the DNC has to pick a nominee to face Donald Trump in the 2020 Election.
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