Tonight Democrats had the opportunity to be diverse and rejected it. For both positions they had two candidates running. Ralph Northam is a State Senator from the Va Beach area. He’s gone from a moderate Democrat to an outspoken liberal in order to win the nomination. Running against him was an Indian-American who served as a Technology Officer for Governors Kaine and Warner and President Obama named Aneesh Chopra. He is a charismatic speaker and creative thinker who would have been the first Indian-American to run statewide in Va. The Democrats voted for the white state senator by a margin of 54%-46%.
In the race for Attorney General another veteran of the senate, Mark Herring, was running as was a young energetic African-American and U.S. Attorney under Obama named Justin Fairfax. Yet again the Democrats voted for the white state senator.
These were races where the powers that be in the Democrat party worked together to advance their good ‘ol boys in the State Senate. After the Republicans nominated a dynamic African-American lawyer and pastor for Lieutenant Governor, Dick Saslaw, the VEA, and other liberal interest groups endorsed the white State Senators. The Democrats had two chances to diversify and rejected both options. Today was the day where the Democrat Party of Virginia told the minorities in their party, “We will draw majority minority districts for you, but we will stop you from winning nominations elsewhere.”
Did I mention that on average the Democrat ticket is 4.5 years older than the Republican ticket? So very literally VA Democrats worked very hard to nominate a ticket of old white guys.
UPDATE: Some have taken strong offense at this post and think I am either saying Republicans have arrived when it comes to reaching out, or in some way saying we are better positioned as a party this cycle to reach out because Jackson is on the ticket. I am not saying that at all. If anyone thinks we have come even close to arriving as a party when it comes to diversity and minority outreach, they are an idiot.
However, I am sick of this party being painted as a party of “Old White Guys” in spite of our efforts to reach out. When we had talented dynamic highly qualified minority candidates speaking at the RNC, MSNBC refused to show their speeches to simply display our party according to their talking points. We have to fight back and call out the hypocrisy of the opposition.
For those of you reading into this post, that it was simply written because of Jackson being on the ticket, read the post again. I could have published the exact same article if Snyder had been nominated, except our ticket would be a heckuva lot younger. I was ready to post this article if the Dem primary turned out the way it did regardless of who won.
