{"id":8617,"date":"2015-08-25T05:14:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T12:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8617"},"modified":"2015-08-26T08:25:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T15:25:35","slug":"the-democrats-too-old-and-too-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-democrats-too-old-and-too-white\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democrats: Too Old and Too White?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leftwingers\u2019 taunts in 2008 and 2012 have come back to haunt them.<\/em><\/h3>\n

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via NRO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I<\/span>n the jubilation of the Obama election victories of 2008 and 2012, the Left warned Republicans that the party of McCain and Romney was now \u201ctoo old, too white, too male \u2014 and too few.\u201d Columnists between 2008 and 2012 ad nauseam berated Republicans on the grounds that their national candidates \u201cno longer looked like America.\u201d The New York Times<\/em> stable crowed that the Republicans of 2008 were \u201call white and nearly all male\u201d \u2014 not too long before McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running-mate. In reaction to the defeats of McCain and Romney, Salon and Harper\u2019s<\/em> ran stories on the \u201cGrand Old White Party\u201d and \u201cAngry White Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For Democratic progressives, Hawaiian Barack Obama could not be of mixed ancestry and decidedly middle class, but simply \u201cblack\u201d or \u201cAfrican American\u201d \u2014 as if he had shared the Jim Crow experience of Clarence Thomas. Nor was there any allowance that race itself had become hard to sort into neat categories in a nation of immigration, intermarriage, and assimilation, in which millions of Americans were one-half this and one-quarter that. Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King proved that well enough by successfully constructing themselves as white for quite a long time.<\/p>\n

Liberals had reversed the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.: The color of our skin, not <\/em>the content of our character, is what matters. Superficial appearance, the ossified politics of the tribe \u2014 the curse of the world outside the United States, where corpses have piled up in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq \u2014 alone mattered. Identity politics dictated that a shrinking white insular conservative party lacked the Democrats\u2019 \u201cinclusiveness\u201d and \u201ccommitment to diversity.\u201d Icons like Barack Obama were what mattered.<\/p>\n

So we come to 2016, and the Democrats, of all people, are suddenly in danger of being the washer calling the dryer white. Who exactly are the serious and not so serious presidential candidates of each party?<\/p>\n

On the Republican side, there is plenty of diversity as defined by liberals \u2014 Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n

And on the Democratic side? The only representative of \u201cdiversity\u201d is Hillary Clinton, who counts by virtue of being female, but who is white and soon to be 68, a fixture on the national political scene for more than a quarter of a century. Her claim on the nomination seems to be that it\u2019s \u201cher turn,\u201d as if Democrats in the post-Obama era nominate their candidates on the basis of seniority and waiting patiently in line. Her status and connections are apparently seen as exempting her from the consequences of violating federal laws that apply to other public servants.<\/p>\n

Her opponent is, in traditional liberal parlance, an old white guy and equally a political fixture, the 73-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont, who has been running for or holding some office for the last 40 years.<\/p>\n

What happens if the Democrats cannot choose between an avowed socialist who is not registered in the party whose nomination he seeks, and Hillary Clinton, who has a felony-indictment sword of Damocles over her head?<\/p>\n

It is said that perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry might run, a 71-year-old white guy who has done nothing but politics for the last 30-plus years. He followed Clinton as secretary of state, so why not also as presidential candidate? But if Kerry\u2019s loss in the 2004 presidential race, or his ponderous and pontificating style, still grate on Democrats, there are plenty of other old white guys who could step up.<\/p>\n

Al Gore is sometimes mentioned, a 67-year-old white male and former Washington insider. But if Gore\u2019s propensity for occasional hysterics and his multimillion-dollar green hypocrisies are a problem, the Democrats can turn to 72-year-old white guy Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has been a Washington fixer who has done nothing outside of politics for the last 40 years.<\/p>\n

If Clinton, Sanders, Gore, and Biden are seen in liberal lingo as \u201ctoo white and too old\u201d \u2014 and if 77-year-old white guy Jerry Brown does not jump into the race, as is sometimes rumored \u2014 then the party can turn to one of two other white-guy candidates: 52-year old Martin O\u2019Malley or 69-year-old Jim Webb. Or perhaps Al Sharpton could revive his presidential ambitions?<\/p>\n

In fact, so far, the monotonous sameness of the serious and semi-serious Democratic contenders is multifaceted and eerie. Almost all come from the same narrow geographical corridor \u2014 Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Their motto in the 21st century seems to be \u201cStay east, old man.\u201d Maybe they are channeling the much-caricatured Founding Fathers, the old-white-guy elites from the Eastern Seaboard who governed a mostly white country.<\/p>\n

So far, on the list of declared or likely Democratic candidates, there is not a Texan, Louisianan, or Californian among them.<\/p>\n

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