Fixing The Trump Disaster

Jonathan Capehart heads to a family barbecue in North Carolina and finds why Joe Biden continues to be popular with older black voters.

As I learned over Easter brunch, my own mother likes Buttigieg. But her heart (right now, anyway) is where the hearts of the overwhelming majority of the people I talked to are — with Biden. Twenty of the 26 people said Biden was their first choice. The No. 1 reason mentioned is Biden’s experience. “He’s a former vice president,” said one. “He’s been in there before,” said another. And another said, “He is a good man.” Not one person mentioned former president Barack Obama, the man who made Biden his vice president. The message here is that you are mistaken if you think African American affection for Obama is the wind beneath Biden’s wings. Nope. They like Biden.

But there is also something else at work here, and it’s a danger to all the African Americans, young people and women in the race, particularly Harris.

One aunt said something my mother said to me nearly a year ago. That it’s going to take a white man to straighten out the mess we’re in. “The way the system is set up now, there is so much racism that it’s going to have to be an old white person to go after an old white person,” my aunt told me. “Old-school against old-school.” She talked further about what this meant for younger candidates such as Buttigieg. “The whole world is in a crazy state, and somebody’s gotta put it back in order. And I think a lot of the young people who want to put it back in order, want to change it completely,” she continued. “But first, you’ve got to put it back in order before you can start changing it.”

Now get this. Before saying all that about Biden, guess who my aunt’s favorite candidate is in the Democratic field? Harris. Yet, my aunt, like everyone else at the barbecue, thought that Biden was the one who could beat President Trump. She thought this not only because the former California attorney general and former San Francisco district attorney is not “an old white person,” but also because Harris is a woman. “Nobody is going to vote for a woman,” said another female relative. “They didn’t vote for Hillary [Clinton]. ... Hillary didn’t win. If she were a man, she would have won.”

In an America that elected Donald Trump, I think a lot of people are convinced that the Democrats have to nominate an old white guy to stand any chance at beating him.  It's the Biden "electability" argument, and it threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hate that people believe that anyone other than a Boomer white guy can win, and that it's too much of a risk to attempt anyone else versus an America that is a white supremacist, sexist nation.

I don't want to admit that's the way it has to be because I think there are multiple better candidates than Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders (or Pete Buttigieg for that matter).  But I'm one voter in Kentucky.  I'm not the guy who's going to pick the nominee.

There's hope, and there's fear.  Right now, we're in fear mode.