As the Democratic Party presents the most demographically diverse field of presidential candidates in the nation's history, some Very Smart pundits and prognosticators are Deeply Concerned. Don't do it, they warn! Don't nominate someone who isn't white, male, and straight. That's a certain path to four more years of Trump, they tell us. Which starts, of course, with the assumption that Trump will even be on the ballot next year.
But according to this line of “thinking,” never mind that Donald Trump is the most corrupt occupant of the Oval Office ever, and never mind that he is "controversial" on "difficult" matters such as racism, sexism, the environment, national security, Constitutional norms, the rule of law, and the continuance of representative government, because that's all a normal part of politics, now. Because Trump is white. And male. And straight. And that's what's most important. And some of the Democratic candidates aren't white or male or straight. And voters will prefer absolutely anyone to a candidate of color, or a woman, or someone who is gay. Anyone.
The same people who are too timid to call Trump a bigot, a misogynist, a criminal, an asset of a hostile foreign government, an aspiring dictator, and a deeply stupid man want Democratic voters to know that they must be timid, too. They insist that we must play on Trump's sewage-saturated field. But we who don't shy from calling Trump what he is must also call this electability argument what it is: Preemptive bigotry. Because anyone who thinks that the only way to defeat a straight white man who is the dregs of humanity is to run another straight white man against him is accepting the normalization of the dregs of humanity. They're telling us that we must accept the normalization of the dregs of humanity.
According to this line of ostensible thinking, being white, male, and straight is a political inoculation against being the dregs of humanity, that of all the many factors that will determine the outcome of next year's election, the only ones that truly matter are the sexual orientation, traditionally defined (but scientifically dubious) definition of race, and gender of the candidates. And faced with the historic disaster that is Trump's occupancy of the Oval Office, far too many Democratic voters are buying into this framing. But they shouldn't be.
Trump is a historical anomaly. His occupancy of the Oval Office first and foremost represents the failure of the electoral structure encoded nearly two hundred fifty years ago by some very smart, very flawed pioneers of limited representative government. The United States is not a democracy, and it's well past time it became one. As we look at the increasing chasm between the results of our presidential elections' popular vote results and the final outcome, it's critical to remember that in most democratic systems of government what we call the popular vote is known simply as the vote. But for now, this is the system we have. And for now we have to win within that system. But even within that system, Trump is a historical anomaly.
Democrats in 2016 nominated one of the most intelligent and qualified career public servants ever to appear on a presidential ballot. But Hillary Clinton also was the first major party presidential female nominee, and some want to attribute her defeat primarily to that. Or they want to believe that she was inherently flawed as a candidate and as a person. But to do so is to ignore the execrable storm of external factors that caused her defeat. To do so is to normalize what happened rather than to be determined to ensure that it, like Trump, was a historical anomaly. And to do so ignores the nature of that anomaly, which is the only way it can be normalized, and repeated.
In 2016, the consistently awful media spent more than a year inventing false equivalencies between the candidates and lambasting Clinton over trivialities, while enabling, assisting, and legitimizing Trump. Among their catastrophic failures, they played into and along with the unprecedented attack on our electoral system by a hostile foreign government and its allies. There also was the unprecedented interference in the electoral process by an FBI director who placed his own self-righteousness above the best interests of the country, not to mention his bureau's traditional guidelines. There also was the complacency of some voters who underestimated the importance of their participation in the electoral process, and the privileged idiocy and petulant pettiness of some other voters who decided it would be better to watch other people's lives destroyed than vote for a candidate toward whom they held an unhinged animus.
And even with all of that, and even with Republican Party voter suppression ramped up also to historic modern levels, the 2016 election was determined by a margin in three states that was but a statistical blip. That doesn't mean that all those factors won't be repeated in 2020, and it doesn't mean that the electoral system has been improved or will be better protected, but it does mean that even with all of those structural failures it took a historically unique concatenation to create such a destructive result. But the only way to prevent another such catastrophe isn't to be timid and back away from the idealism and determination that alone have evolved this nation forward, despite those structural failures and despite the persistent efforts of the forces of regression, it's to recognize those failures and efforts for what they are, and to identify and avoid being manipulated and distracted by them, in real time.
And that includes being motivated to vote, no matter whom the Democrats nominate, no matter what the media and the internet trolls say, even if that nominee isn't among one's favorite choices. Every one of the Democratic candidates would be a paradigmatic improvement over Trump or whomever the Republican Party nominates, and every even remotely plausible Democratic candidate even more so. Vote for the Democrat. Period. If every potential Democratic voter had acted on such a simple principle in 2016, we wouldn't be in this crisis.
The depth and diversity of the 2020 Democratic presidential field should be cause for excitement. It's inspiring. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the best candidate isn't a straight white man, but don't determine that decision because a candidate is a straight white man. Don't be afraid of the candidates who do excite or inspire you. The media will do what they do. The worst of them already are doing it to that same straight, white, male candidate we're told is the safest. Republicans will smear and attack anyone the Democrats nominate, no matter how ideal that candidate seems on paper.
And the media will play along. They will normalize extremism, create false equivalencies, and legitimize smears because that's what they do. And Democrats and potential Democratic voters need to be smart enough not to buy into it. And no matter whom Democrats nominate, Republicans will roll out their biggest, scariest attack of all: They'll cry socialism!—a word that is meant to invoke terror but in modern political discourse has no meaning at all.
Electability arguments can be self-fulfilling. They also can be a means of further institutionalizing racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. If the best argument one can make for a presidential candidate is that candidate's race, gender, and sexual orientation, it might be because there's little else to recommend that candidate. It also might be because the person promoting that argument has personal issues about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Certainly, such factors can influence votes, but at this point the people who will be influenced by such aren't likely to vote for Democrats, anyway.
In the Democratic primaries and caucuses, don't vote from a place of fear, vote from a place of inspiration. Voting from a place of fear is unilateral political disarmament. It's submission and surrender to the tradition and culture of exclusion. It's also a more likely recipe for failure than is voting for the candidate you most prefer. The last Democrat elected president was a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. And he defeated a straight, white man who was legitimately recognized as a war hero, and who was inexplicably a media darling long after he had proved that his heroism was mostly a thing of the past. The last Republican to win the Electoral College was an openly bigoted con man who was recorded bragging that he molests women. We can toss electability arguments.
In the primaries and caucuses, vote for the Democrat you most want to be president, and then if that person isn't nominated, vote for the Democrat who is. No matter whom that Democrat is. The stakes are too high. But that doesn't mean that in the campaign for the nomination you should be afraid to support the candidate you really want to win. Because whoever wins the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination will be electable. If potential Democratic voters are smart and principled. Electability isn't predetermined. Electability is up to us. Electability is up to you.