Donna Edwards is black and is a woman. Chris Van Hollen is white, and he’s also a man.
If you followed Maryland’s Senate race, which Van Hollen won easily on Tuesday, with the backing of the Democratic establishment, the questions of race and sex seemed central.
“There are only 20 women in the Senate,” Edwards says, making the case for her candidacy. “There are no black women.”
Edwards ran an identity politics campaign. But look closer at this Senate race, and at other primaries in both parties, and it’s hard not to conclude that — woman, man, white, black, populist, elite — it’s all identity politics.
Chevy Chase Village is the wealthiest neighborhood in the D.C. area. “The village,” as locals call it, is anchored by the Chevy Chase Country Club, which is so prestigious that there is no sign for it on Connecticut Ave. When I arrived at the polling place — the charming Village Hall — I parked between a BMW and a Porsche SUV.
The median household income there is literally off the charts — it’s more than $250,000, which is as high as the Census counts. If you earn less than $150,000 in The Village, you’re in the bottom 25 percent (and you’re probably a retired wealthy couple).
I asked voters there — the Village is 0.6 percent black — what they thought of Edwards’ identity politics. One voter, who wouldn’t give her name, agreed that Edwards’ race and sex were pertinent, and that “the lack of women, and the lack of black women” in the Senate was a problem. “I absolutely think that having women in elected office is important,” she said, bragging that she voted for Hillary Clinton for president and Kathleen Matthews for Congress, thus an all-female slate.
In general, though, the Village people mostly rejected identity politics. “I’m all for diversity,” said Tom Carroll, an elderly Hungarian immigrant and World War II veteran, “but she’s running against Van Hollen.”
Van Hollen represents Chevy Chase in Congress. As a kid, he grew up in a Northern Virginia neighborhood (McLean) analogous to Chevy Chase when he wasn’t in Turkey or Pakistan thanks to his father’s diplomatic postings. Carroll served a long career in international development, and so did his wife. They’re not the only diplomats and World Bankers in the neighborhood. “There are a lot of foreign service in the Village.”
Van Hollen, the Villagers might say, is “one of us.” His parents both went to Harvard. He graduated Swarthmore. He and his wife (a DC-area local) met at Harvard’s Kennedy School of government. Van Hollen also has a law degree from Georgetown.
Edwards is no slouch: She has an advanced degree, too, and had a very successful corporate career before becoming a liberal activist. But for the Democratic Party leadership, she’s not “one of us.”
Van Hollen, you see, embodies what Democrats want their party to be. He came to Congress by wresting the Montgomery County seat from Republican Connie Morella in 2002. Winning the upper-middle-class white suburbs away from the GOP was a key part of the Democrats’ self-image. It meant that the successful and the heavily educated preferred Democrats.
Trading those backwards southerners in 2002 and 2004 for the suburban professionals, the Ivy Leaguers and the Swarthmore grads was a point of pride for Democrats. The “good people” were becoming Dems. Van Hollen’s win in 2002 embodied that realignment.
Van Hollen will be the nominee because Democratic leaders want to be the party of Van Hollen — the party of Chevy Chase. It’s elite identity politics.
Edwards, by contrast, broke into Congress by defeating incumbent Congressman Al Wynn in 2008. At that time, Van Hollen was putting in his time as a party man, chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — a job that largely involves raising money from lobbyists and Wall Streeters.
For her house district, however, Edwards couldn’t be a better fit. Lanham is upper-middle class (more than $70,000 median household income) and black (about two-thirds). Edwards is a black college graduate and a single mom (like one-fourth of the families in Lanham) who worked hard and had career success.
Voters in Lanham gushed over Edwards. “She is our woman!” one voter, a black woman, exclaimed after voting for her, and agreeing that the Senate needs a black woman. “We need to be represented,” Barbara, another black woman, told me. “There’s a viewpoint, and she’s got it.”
Edwards also resonated with some feminist corners of the Left. “Donna Edwards is one of us,” was the headline of one profile. The profile ran in the feminist outlet “LennyLetter,” cofounded by television writer Lena Dunham.
You can see elite identity politics at play in both parties and in most states. In the Pennsylvania primary, where the party leadership carried political neophyte Katie McGinty to victory Tuesday night over retired admiral and former Congressman Joe Sestak, identity politics is the simplest explanation.
A salty and gruff military man in Sestak or a revolving-door lobbyist darling of the abortion lobby in McGinty? The Democrats knew which type of party they want to be.
People will throw the “identity politics” label, often as a slur, at minorities like Donna Edwards, or populist candidates like Donald Trump. Honest observers will admit, however, it’s identity politics all the way down.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
