At their next debate, some Democrats are saying, their party will have a “non-diverse” set of candidates on the stage. Cory Booker, a candidate who hasn’t qualified for the debate, claims “we’re spiraling towards a debate stage that could have six people with no diversity whatever.”
Is that true? It depends on what kind of diversity you’re referring to.
Let’s look at the list of candidates who have qualified in alphabetical order.
Joe Biden. He’s of Irish and German descent, common enough in American life, but not at the presidential level since the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy. He’s also Catholic, and if elected, would be only the second Roman Catholic president.
Pete Buttigieg. He’s of Maltese descent, the son of an academic who became the translator of the Italian communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. I don’t think we’ve ever had a president of Maltese descent before, nor any president since John Quincy Adams (elected nearly 200 years ago) who has as much familiarity with foreign languages. Also, he’s gay and married to another man. Looks pretty diverse to me.
Amy Klobuchar. She’s a woman of Slovenian descent on her father’s side and Swiss descent on her mother’s. One grandfather was a miner on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Most Americans have no knowledge of Slovenia (Melania Trump’s native country), and only a cartoon vision of Switzerland. Klobuchar looks pretty diverse to me.
Bernie Sanders. He’s Jewish and a self-proclaimed socialist. How many Jewish presidents have we had? How many Socialist presidents have we had? Whatever you think of Sanders, he would have been considered too diverse to be a serious presidential candidate in the 1980s, when he was narrowly elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, or in the 1990s, when he was elected to Congress as an independent. But he ran a strong second to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has stayed up toward the top of the polls in this cycle.
Tom Steyer. This hedge fund billionaire is a straight white male, the son of a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, who grew up on the Upper East Side, a graduate of Yale College and Stanford Business School. Sound un-diverse? Well, how many people in America have similar backgrounds? Probably only 1 or 2%. Oh, and by the way, he’s of Jewish descent on his father’s side.
Elizabeth Warren. She’s a woman who grew up in Oklahoma and has said she was told by family members that she had Native American ancestors (as many people in Oklahoma do). It turns out that’s not true, and you can argue that she exploited her supposed ancestry for professional gain. But either way, she has a background similar to that of many millions of Americans, and one not common among presidential candidates. That’s certainly one kind of diversity.
Overall, these six Democratic presidential candidates have a wide variety of ethnic, economic, religious, and cultural backgrounds. Taken together, they probably share demographic characteristics with a majority of the American people. Yes, they do not, as a group represent the precise demographic percentages of the American people or of American voters or of American Democrats (those percentages are somewhat different). They include — this is Booker’s point — no one of African descent or with claims to be of Hispanic ethnicity.
But, so what? A political party doesn’t have a responsibility to field a group of presidential candidates precisely matching the national profile, and it’s hard to imagine how a party could arrange to do so. In this country, each collection of presidential candidates of either party is going to be diverse, each in its own diverse way.
