The Republican candidates for president were remarkably unified in the (few) policy preferences they espoused at their debates on Wednesday night. All support cutting taxes and reducing regulation, and all oppose crony capitalism. The candidates may be remarkably diverse in terms of ethnicity and race: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are Hispanic (and, apparently, so is Jeb Bush); Ben Carson is black; Bobby Jindal is Indian, etc. But ideologically speaking, they’re a pretty homogeneous bunch.
The Democrats, meanwhile, find themselves in the opposite situation. Their presidential candidates are all over 50 years old and white. (At least by today’s definition of white.) But there’s a decent amount of ideological diversity among them. Sanders is a socialist; Clinton, as she put it, “represent[s] Wall Street.” O’Malley opposes the death penalty; Clinton supports it.
But there’s an irony here: Today’s Democratic base is famed for prizing diversity; of sexual orientation, of ethnicity, and especially, of race. Yet those same self-professed liberals have grown increasingly hostile to intellectual and ideological diversity: Witness the resurgence of political correctness on places like college campuses, and the complementary increasing hostility to free speech. Yet the three Democratic candidates for presidents are all straight, old, and white: three epithets, in the mind of many bien pensant liberals. The Democrats may have diversity, just not the kind that the base cares about, or even wants. Horror of horrors, they have to look to the GOP for that.
