Home / academy of the overrated / There’s never a wrong time to write about white men who are running for president

There’s never a wrong time to write about white men who are running for president

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Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash

From the front page of today’s Washington Post, the type of reporting that will make this election last 500,000 years in subjective time.

Print version:

For black voters, a 2020 dilemma.

Online version:

With the most diverse presidential field ever, black voters ponder the best odds against Trump

I was not aware that this is the year we’re being represented by attendees of this year’s National Action Network conference. I thought that was 2018. But then I also did not know that we were supposed to have selected the candidate that we will support. At any rate, when asked who they support for president some people at a conference gave different answers, and you know what that means.

But there was also tension between some black voters who want a candidate reflecting the nation’s diversity and others who perceive the white men as potentially stronger against Trump.

[…]

Other Democrats said they view Biden, O’Rourke and Sanders as credible and compelling contenders best equipped to defeat Trump. The conflicting opinions revealed Democratic divisions touching on race, gender and identity that could shape the nomination fight.

Oh no. People have different views of contemporary things. Whatever next, people voting for their preferred candidate during some sort of primary contest? Surely this is the worst case of Dems in disarray until the next one.

As an aside, I do wonder if reporters mean to slight Democratic voters who aren’t African-American in these articles. I know that black voters are not the only ones who care about and indeed are thrilled by the number of presidential candidates who aren’t white men. Articles like this boil diversity down to a it’s black thing and walk away. But then it seems that the reporters who write them often have other things on their minds.

NEW YORK — More than a third of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president are women. There are two black men, a Mexican American man, a Taiwanese American man and a gay man.

Yet, in the initial phase of the 2020 race, two straight white men have emerged as the fastest fundraisers, and another has jumped to a lead in recent polls, before even announcing his candidacy.

The rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), ex-congressman Beto O’Rourke and former vice president Joe Biden in a field with historic diversity has caused dismay among some Democrats, particularly African Americans and women hoping for a mold-breaking nominee who reflects the changing face of the party and the country.

[…]

As 11 presidential hopefuls appeared this week at a Midtown Manhattan hotel for the National Action Network convention, frustration emerged over the standing of the nonwhite candidates.

So the reporters want the reader to know: Most Democratic candidates are not straight white men. The Democratic base – ditto. The Democratic base – some aren’t pleased with the fact that candidates who are white straight men are garnering so much attention and so on. Also, there’s a lot of diversity in the form of African-American women  going on here.

That brings me to the quiz. Below is a list of the last names of people who have declared that they are running and one person who keeps threatening to declare although I fervently hope he doesn’t. There is also a list of numbers from 0-12, some of which represent how many times the candidate or imminent candidate is mentioned in the article. See if you can match the candidate to the number of times she or he was mentioned. I’ll post the answers later, but you can figure it out the same way I did. Need a hint? Read the headline to this post.

Biden
Booker
Buttigieg
Castro
Gillibrand
Harris
Klobuchar
O’Rourke
Sanders
Warren

0
1
2
3
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5
6
7
8
9
10
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12

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