Electability

Code for "Prejudice."

Obama tan suit scandal

American misunderstand the election of 2008. America did not become "post racial." 

Obama did not win. The GOP lost.

Barrack Obama is a mixed race, mild mannered man of extraordinary rhetorical skills. Many Americans drew an inference from his victory in 2008 that Americans had, at long last, become post-racial. The great contradiction and hypocrisy in the "all men are created equal" history of America was finally overcome, 216 years after the election of George Washington.

It was a milestone, yes. Progress, but not victory.

What really happened is that Republican George W. Bush presided over an economic meltdown that coincided with the 2008 election. It was understood to be a Republican disaster of banks having been allowed to go wild. Candidate John McCain seemed overwhelmed by the collapse. Voters would have elected any Democrat.

It's the financial collapse, stupid.

We were not post racial, and that became apparent shortly. The response to incidents of police with blacks, Tea Party populism, and the ready willingness of Republican voters to believe Trump's birtherism gambit showed that race was still an open sore in America. A great many Americans were open to considering Obama to be "other," and not really thoroughly American. Not "white," in all its implications of who really belongs here.

Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that racism was endemic. A  vast number of people were racist, "deplorable."  Yes. Trump, too, understood that racism was vast and endemic, he leaned into it, exacerbated it, and got elected. He proved Hillary was right. Democrats noticed.

Change happens. Two steps forward, one back. Trump is the step back.

Democrats seek a candidate who can unite America in opposition to Trump. They want someone electable. The process drew out over twenty plausible candidates, young, old, female, male, black, brown, white. Lots of diversity. The process then eliminated them one by one. Voters appear to have settled on one of two white men in their late 70's, the tail end members of the Silent Generation, both with obvious and perhaps fatal electoral flaws. It seems crazy, but that is who survived the process.

What happened? Maybe Democrats weren't careless. Maybe they were too careful. Maybe they were prejudiced by accident.

Thad Guyer is an attorney who represents whistleblower employees. He has an international practice carried out wherever he has his laptop computer. He currently spends most of his time in Vietnam. Fifty years ago his college career was interrupted by the U. S. Army draft and he served in Vietnam as a "grunt," carrying a rifle and participating in "search and destroy" patrols in he Vietnam countryside.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

"The Social Injustice with Electability"

Guyer

Political autopsies usually occur at the end of an unsuccessful campaign. But we are seeing now an unprecedented autopsy of how the 2020 Democratic campaign killed off all the women and minority candidates. Political pathologists are pointing to the concept of "electability" as a major contributing cause of death. 

As Democrats asked which candidates looked most electable, women and minorities were seen as too risky. Racist and sexist results are most widely caused by unintentional bias. After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, many employers who were not themselves racist excluded blacks from positions visible to customers for fear of losing the trade of segregationists. As women tried to break into all male jobs like airline pilot, policeman and combat soldier, the expressed concern was those institutions would lose the confidence of the public.  Claire Malone of FiveThirtyEight.com argues the "electability" factor in our primary was a calculus of which candidates bigoted voters would accept.  This is the same factor Congress and the courts struck down in employment, restaurants, housing and the military.

Just as we are sickened by bigotry portrayed in our experiences, literature, cinema and journalism, we are about to be sickened by the appearances and voices of two elderly men on TV day after day for months to come preaching social justice. Enlightened choices for VP may lessen the malaise but beg the question from young women of "why isn't she at the top of our ticket in the year of the woman"?  Our answer will amount to "because we needed bigoted voters to join with us in defeating Trump-- it's called electability".