"Should a White Man Be the Face of the Democratic Party in 2020?"

A blunt headline at the NYT.

The article forefronts this quote from a young woman: "Personally I’d love to see a woman... If people are being catty and holding gender or race against a candidate, it would break my heart."

So I infer the NYT answer to the question is: Yes, of course, that would be fine, if it's the right white man.

We now know that, apparently, Joe Biden is going to enter the race. And it is a little embarrassing that, according to recent polls, the top 4 candidates for the Democratic nomination are white males. I think the NYT is trying to help readers accept that rejecting white maleness should not be a priority. The radical feminist in me wants to say: Yes, yes, it's never the right time to reject the white male. But this isn't the right time for the radical feminist, is it? This is the right time for quoting random young women who casually waft the notion that it would be CATTY to insist on a woman candidate.

Catty!!!

It doesn't take a radical feminist to call sexism on that word. What the hell, NYT?

Is a white male the best face for an increasingly diverse Democratic Party in 2020? And what’s the bigger gamble: to nominate a white man and risk disappointing some of the party’s base, or nominate a minority candidate or a woman who might struggle to carry predominantly white swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that both Barack Obama and Mr. Trump won?

Yes, of course. It's always one version or another of that story.

The linked article is long. I'll just give you one more quote:

“Trump will run over a woman,” Carl West, 64, said as he walked to see Ms. Warren at the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. “He’ll just run a woman into the ground.”

The Bernie-Beto-Biden triad has 70% of the Democratic primary vote.

According to a new Morning Consult poll. It's Biden 35, Sanders 27, O'Rourke 8. Biden, the one who's not yet declared, is up 4 points since last week. Beto is up 1. Kamala Harris is down 2, to 8%.

Why is the triad doing so well? Why hasn't Harris gotten traction?

"Beto O'Rourke raised massive $6.1 million his first day in the 2020 race..."

According to his campaign, CNN reports.

That tops the $5.9 million one-day total Sen. Bernie Sanders announced after he launched his campaign. The closest other 2020 Democratic candidate to publicize their first-day fundraising total was California Sen. Kamala Harris at $1.5 million....

[O'Rourke's] refusal to release first-day fundraising totals over the weekend had raised doubts that O'Rourke had met fundraising expectations around his campaign launch. He remained coy about his fundraising for days.

"I can't right now," he said Friday in Washington, Iowa.

A reporter responded that O'Rourke could share his fundraising totals if he wanted to.

"You're right," he responded. "I choose not to."

Ha ha. Brilliant move, withholding the numbers and creating the space within which naysayers would neigh. It makes the good news sparkly bright.

Oh, the anguish this must cause Kamala Harris pushers (like the NYT)! Oh, the pain to those who sought to create a fundamental belief that the Democrat candidate could not be a white man! The Bernie-Beto-Biden triad must be stopped, that was their message. But Bernie got in and raked in the cash, and now Beto's done even better. The non-whitemales are far behind. And the #1 white male isn't even in yet. But we know Biden will show up next, and the only question will be whether he'll out-fund-raise the other components of the triad, the other white males.

By the way: "Biden Accidentally Says He’s Running, Crowd Chants ‘Run, Joe, Run!’" (Rolling Stone).

“I know I get criticized. I’m told I get criticized by the new left,” Biden said told the audience at the First State Democratic Dinner. “I have the most progressive record of anybody running for the — anybody who would run.”

Before Biden even had a chance to walk the statement back, the audience was already on its feet, cheering him on, chanting, “Run, Joe, run!”

“I didn’t mean it!” Biden insisted, laughing, adding, “Of anybody who would run, because, folks, we have to bring this country back together again.”

Beto's in.

"Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman whose near-miss Senate run last year propelled him to Democratic stardom, announced on Thursday that he was running for president, betting that voters will prize his message of national unity and generational change in a 2020 primary teeming with committed progressives. His decision jolts an early election season already stuffed with contenders, adding to the mix a relentless campaigner with a small-dollar fund-raising army, the performative instincts of a former punk rocker and a pro-immigrant vision to counteract President Trump’s."

The NYT reports.

ADDED: This post gets my "Bernie-Beto-Biden triad" tag. Back on the last day of last year, I wrote "I've been seeing the simultaneous crushing of the white male triad — Bernie, Beto, Biden — and I get it..."

2 days ago, I was strongly impressed by the NYT article that promoted the Senate Foursome (Harris, Gillibrand, Warren, and Booker) and, on their behalf, gave the BBB triad a shove:

For the Senate foursome, moving quickly into the race is also a pre-emptive effort to undercut the early advantages of a duo of universally known contenders, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who may enter the race in the coming months. Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders would start off with important advantages....

But as white men, Mr. Biden, Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Rourke do not reflect the gender and racial diversity of many Democratic candidates and swaths of the electorate that dominated the 2018 midterms. Ms. Harris, Ms. Warren, Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Booker, by contrast, would instantly make the 2020 Democratic field the most diverse array of presidential candidates in history. And they might well scramble the early polling leads held by Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders, who benefit from strong name recognition but would be in their late 70s by Election Day 2020, at a moment when some in the party are agitating for generational change....

The NYT was trying to crush the BBB triad in one fell swoop, for the sake of The Foursome....

I thought the triad might get the message and stand down, but Bernie went it, and so did Beto. That eases the way for Biden.

The NYT looks for the Democratic Party candidate who "matches the moment," tells us what this "moment" is, and nudges the non-moment-matching would-bes to stay out of the way.

"It is hard to recall a recent presidential primary where, at the outset of the race, there was this much genuine mystery — not only about who would eventually emerge as the nominee, but who planned to run at all," write Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns in "2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Are Lining Up. Who Matches the Moment?" (NYT):

Ms. Warren’s announcement Monday was expected. And it will not be a surprise when Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California enter the race in the coming weeks. But the number of would-be candidates who may ultimately stay out of the race is larger than the list of contenders who are certain to run.

There are the well-known, or at least much-buzzed-about, Democrats who are still deliberating: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is the most prominent of this group, and leads the field in initial polling in Iowa. But there is also great anticipation over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination in 2016, and Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, whose losing Senate bid this year electrified many grass-roots Democrats.

It is unclear if any of these men will enter the race — particularly Mr. Biden, who, associates say, is ambivalent about running after over three decades of presidential fits and starts.

It's a subtle pushback to the Bernie-Beto-Biden triad, but it is — as I see it — another NYT pushback to the 3 white men who ought to know better than to clutter the path of The Foursome. And we can see who the expendable member of The Foursome is, because they've left her name out of this article altogether.

Martin and Burns home in on Warren, who just announced she's in the running. She's early, but she's late:

Would she be the president today if she had run in 2016, as some liberal activists and admirers urged her to? Mr. Sanders ended up filling the void on the populist left and ran a surprisingly strong campaign against Hillary Clinton....

[T]he more recent history of presidential calculations suggests that candidates are wiser to run when the moment presents itself. That is what Mr. Obama did in 2008 after just four years in the Senate, the same period Ms. Warren would have served by 2016. Some Democrats think 2020 is Mr. O’Rourke’s moment: He has been in the House for just six years, but many liberals see his energy and freshness as inspiring.

One reason Ms. Warren announced on Monday and declared so early, her allies suggested, was to erase any uncertainty about her intentions among supporters whom she kept waiting — and ultimately disappointed — in 2016....

Timing is also crucial in presidential races because the issues can change so quickly. Mr. Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and policies around race and immigration have shifted the political conversation away from matters of economic inequality, which has been the life’s work of Ms. Warren and which defined much of the 2016 Democratic primary.

I think the reason why the NYT didn't mention the fourth member of The Foursome (Kirsten Gillibrand) was because they had to focus on Warren, given her announcement, and there's this idea that the "political conversation" has shifted from class consciousness to race consciousness. It's not a white-person "moment" anymore. "Who Matches the Moment?" says the headline, and the "moment" is, apparently, what Trump made it, with his "incendiary rhetoric and policies around race and immigration."

So Warren had her time, 2016, and she missed it, and let's not even mention that other white woman — or get derailed into the icky inquiry whether Warren is white — because the path needs clearing. Who knows how much white-person clutter could fall on the path the NYT would like to clear for — let's be honest — Kamala Harris?

The NYT is trying to be somewhat subtle, but it seems so obvious to me.

By the way, whatever happened to the rise of women, and why isn't the "moment" about #MeToo, which would vault Kirsten Gillibrand to the front?

I've been seeing the simultaneous crushing of the white male triad — Bernie, Beto, Biden — and I get it, but what's with "Why the Bernie Movement Must Crush Beto O’Rourke"?

That's the headline for this Jonathan Chait piece (in NY Magazine).

2 days ago, I was strongly impressed by the NYT article that promoted the Senate Foursome (Harris, Gillibrand, Warren, and Booker) and, on their behalf, gave the BBB triad a shove:

For the Senate foursome, moving quickly into the race is also a pre-emptive effort to undercut the early advantages of a duo of universally known contenders, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who may enter the race in the coming months. Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders would start off with important advantages....

But as white men, Mr. Biden, Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Rourke do not reflect the gender and racial diversity of many Democratic candidates and swaths of the electorate that dominated the 2018 midterms. Ms. Harris, Ms. Warren, Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Booker, by contrast, would instantly make the 2020 Democratic field the most diverse array of presidential candidates in history. And they might well scramble the early polling leads held by Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders, who benefit from strong name recognition but would be in their late 70s by Election Day 2020, at a moment when some in the party are agitating for generational change....

So let's take a closer look at Chait's plan to get Bernie — or is it just his "movement"? — to crush Beto. (Maybe get the BBB triad to fight itself and leave The Foursome free to perform more appealing feats?)

[O'Rourke] has replicated aspects of Sanders’s appeal — his positivity and refusal to accept PAC money — while exceeding it in some ways. Sanders is charismatic in an unconventional way, the slovenly and cranky but somewhat lovable old uncle, while O’Rourke projects a classic handsome, toothy, Kennedy-esque charm that reliably makes Democrats swoon. Hard-core loyalists find the contrast irksome....

The frequently invoked comparisons between O’Rourke and [Obama] explain both O’Rourke’s wide appeal within the party ranks and the mistrust he has inspired on the far left. Socialists generally regard Obama as a failure....

Baffled liberals, many still nursing wounds from 2016, see the passionate intensity of the Bernie movement as a personality cult, propelled by unthinking devotion to him (or spite at the party that they believe rigged the primary against him). It is anything but. The socialist left belongs to Sanders simply because there is no other presidential candidate who meets their exacting ideological criteria. They see O’Rourke as a threat to their project because, in important ways, he is.

So, about that headline — "Why the Bernie Movement Must Crush Beto O’Rourke." I don't think it's Chait saying this is what he wants to happen. I think it expresses the point of view of "the Bernie Movement" (i.e., real socialists). The idea is that Beto (like Obama) isn't a real socialist and he's a threat to the socialist agenda, therefore those who care about socialism must get Beto defeated.

The NYT was trying to crush the BBB triad in one fell swoop, for the sake of The Foursome. Chait is talking about socialists getting a good footing as the race goes forward, and opining that it won't happen at all unless Bernie has that niche. Beto is blocking Bernie's access to the niche.

By the way, beginning with this post, I'm using Beto to refer to Beto O'Rourke. I generally use last names, but there are some exceptions, and one of them is Bernie, and I like grouping the 3 B's together —  Bernie, Beto, Biden. I made a new tag: the Bernie-Beto-Biden triad.