POLITICO: "How Does a Straight White Male Democrat Run for President?" (Answer: "Very Carefully")
02/18/2019
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From Politico:

How Does a Straight White Male Democrat Run for President?
Very carefully.

By BILL SCHER February 17, 2019

Of the nine candidates officially running in the Democratic presidential primary, only one is a heterosexual white man. And that guy, former Rep. John Delaney, generally polls somewhere between zero and 1 percent.

But of the 17 Democrats reportedly still pondering a presidential bid, all but one is a straight white man. It’s hard to chalk that up to coincidence. Clearly, the women and minority candidates sensed that the water is warm for them, and the straight white men appear to be worried that this is just not their year.

CNN’s demographic number cruncher Ron Brownstein noted recently that the percentage of the Democratic primary electorate who are women, nonwhite voters and—“the most liberal component” of the party—college-educated white voters are all on the rise. The 2016 Democratic primary electorate was 58 percent women, 38 percent nonwhite voters and 37 percent college-educated white voters, all numbers that could be bigger in 2020, and strongly suggest a hospitable environment for candidates who embody a diverse America.

Does this mean that Democratic Party voters are so obsessed with identity politics that they are shutting straight white men out of the party? No. Who have been the top two candidates in nearly every primary poll? Not just two straight white males, but geriatric ones: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are the two oldest straight white men in the lot. In the most recent POLITICO/Morning Consult Democratic presidential primary tracking poll, the straight white male candidates, largely driven by Biden and Sanders, combined to garner 64 percent of the vote.

[Comment at Unz.com]
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