Before any candidates announced their intentions for 2020, I started thinking about what type of candidate I wanted to support. This post is an attempt to organize my thoughts into a cogent philosophy.
For this exercise, I think it is useful to view an election as a market. In doing so, it is important to understand that the electoral market is not symmetrical. It does not afford each participant equality at the start and does not seek equality at the finish. Candidates that are connected to the party or have the backing of those deep within the party have a better chance. The ability to raise money greatly impacts a candidate’s chances.
For a long time i wanted this election to address systemic prejudice. When Barack Obama ran, I did not think that an African American could win the Presidency. A perfect storm brought on by eight years of buffoonery that included two wars and an economic disaster set the stage for Obama. In any other year, that may not have been assured. The system — the parties and donors, favor older, white men. Before the first debate, I decided that my ideal candidate would be a woman of color age of 55 or under (not a boomer). Only one candidate met this criteria (Kamala Harris) and I never warmed to her.
To date, we have had no women Presidents, one President of color, and 24 Presidents who were 55 or younger. Of the candidates in the evengual 2020 Democratic field, seven were women, seven were people of color, and 14 were 55 or younger. In total, 19 or the 29 candidates in field met one or more of these criteria.
So, the question that was important to me was, why are these external features more important to me than their beliefs or policies? The short answer is that I don’t think they are, but let’s start by choosing from these 19 and deciding if one or more of them have policy positions, experience, intellect and the temperament that I am comfortable with as a President.
So, why should the first cut be based on these external factors? Answer: systemic prejudices are resistant to a market solution. The party elites tend to be old, white guys or tend to think of old, white guys when they think of a President (45 of 45 Presidents have been men, 44 of 45 have been white men, and 31 were white men over 55). So, it seems there is not equality at the start of the process nor at the end.
In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court. It took twelve years before Ruth Bader Ginsberg became the second, 16 more years before Sonia Sotomayor became the third and only one more year until Elena Kagan brought the total number to three (O’Connor retired in 2005.) So, 39 years after the first woman was appointed as the 102nd justice, 3 of the next twelve were women — not exactly equality, for 25 percent of the court.
For African Americans, the story is much worse. Thurgood Marshall was the 96th justice, appointed in 1967. Clarence Thomas replaced him as the 106th justice in 1991. It looks like we will wait until he retires before appointing a third African American justice. So, for the past 53 years there has been exactly one African American on the court.
In professional sports, a seeming meritocracy, the NFL color barrier was broken in 1946, when four players entered the league. The first black to start a game as quarterback didn’t happen until 1968, until then blacks were not allowed in the ‘skilled’ positions. The first black did not become a head coach until Art Shell in 1989 (actually, in both cases the correct answer was Fritz Pollard in the 20s when the NFL was hardly professional). The point is that integration is not equality and that it is, in fact, a long way from equality. The mere fact that it still makes news points to the fact that we are unequal in so many ways. It is a struggle every step of the way to reach equality. Women still earn less than men, black families still face a significant wealth gap, and there are still huge gulfs in the number of elected officials who are women and/or minorities. Without a constant push, the movement from integration to equality occurs at a glacial pace.
So, in choosing between the 19 candidates who met one or more of my criteria, six (Michael Bennett, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro) were deemed worth a closer look. I initially ranked them as Booker, Gillibrand, Warren, Harris, Castro, Bennett. This was based on their policies, temperament and continued consideration of the external factors mentioned above. The reason Warren was initially lower was larger due to her age. I considered age to be important because candidates should be looking to the future and interested in addressing subjects like climate change. I was, and still am, considered that older candidates do not take this seriously.
Once the campaign got underway, I started paying attention to candidate interviews and following the campaigns. Booker dropped a little in my eyes because he did not seem combative enough. Warren moved up mainly because I liked the way she framed her message in terms of corruption. All candidates saw this as a problem, but Warren seemed to really understand its depth and the importance of rooting it out.
Gillibrand, I liked because she was comfortable running as a woman and never wavered from that. Harris, I never quite figured out what her campaign was about. Castro, I like a lot and think he might be the most viable VP candidate. Bennett, was the least interesting of the bunch.
So, Warren rose to the top. The knocks on her are that she changes her mind, she was less than honest about her native heritage and she’s too liberal (or not liberal enough). First, I don’t see changing one’s mind as a negative most of the time. People who make the most right decisions tend to be those that are willing to change their minds. Warren began as a Republican and through her years of academic research reached the conclusion that some of her long held beliefs were wrong, based on the evidence. She changed her mind based on the evidence rather than cling to bad opinions. I can respect that. As for her heritage, I don’t care about her heritage. People are told things by their parents or grandparents all the time that may or may not be true. Coming from Oklahoma, it was very plausible that she had native ancestry. I don’t begrudge her for not vetting her ancestors. As for her positions, she is a little to the right of me. No candidate is going to match me perfectly (Sanders probably comes closest, but didn’t make the cut based on his age, whiteness and maleness.)
So, I am left with the best, imperfect candidate. Warren moves us closer to equality, she also possesses the intellect and temperament to be President. That’s who I am supporting now. If there comes a time when her candidacy is no longer viable, I will move to someone who is still viable. I will vote for any warm turd that opposes Trump.