It’s a timeworn dictum of liberals that affirmative action is not, I repeat, is not the same thing as racial quotas. And yet, here we are: Just weeks before the first contest in the Democratic presidential primary, and liberals are steamed that they didn’t demand their party explicitly reserve spaces for minorities on the debate stages so that they would have a better shot at the nomination.
Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote Thursday about the sad “whites only” message his party is sending by setting up rules that have, according to him, “prematurely” weeded out the less popular minority candidates. “As a result,” he wrote, “the Democrats’ greatest electoral strength — diversity — likely will not be on display. ‘Whites only’ is not a look the party should want.”
He offered no solutions to this apparent problem other than to simply allow more spots open on the debate stage. He would not suggest such a thing if, say, Julian Castro (Latino) had made the cut and Pete Buttigieg (white) had not. Neither Robinson nor any other liberal got upset early last month when Montana Governor Steve Bullock (white) ended his campaign for the nomination.
There is literally nothing the party can do to ensure more “diversity” to endure on the primary debate stages than to enact a candidate quota system that takes the power to determine debate participation away from donors and voters. Robinson doesn’t want to say that out loud. No liberal does, though David Leonhardt at the New York Times came closest.
“It makes more sense for only the true polling leaders to be guaranteed debate slots,” he wrote last weekend. “Beyond them, the party could set aside at least one spot for a governor and perhaps one for a senator from a large state or swing state.”
That’s a quota — not by race, but I wonder who Leonhardt had in mind when he suggested a reservation for a senator “from a large state?”
The fact is that the minority candidates, among them Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Andrew Yang, and Deval Patrick, weren’t popular enough within the party’s own voters and in particular with its nonwhite voters. Black voters seem to prefer Joe Biden. Latino voters like Bernie Sanders. (And the racially fluid feel an inexplicable bond with Elizabeth Warren.)
Liberals who insist there’s something wrong with their own party reducing the debate stage to only white candidates should just admit it: They want racial quotas.
