The quest for a straight white Christian male savior is dumb

Good politicians come in all packages.

Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is an electoral overperformer. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla)

Axios ran a story over the weekend making explicit what I think has been implicit in a lot of Democrats’ thinking about the 2028 presidential election: the idea that the best way to win is to nominate “a straight white Christian man” because “parts of the electorate are too biased to support a woman or other diverse candidate for president.”

This is, I think, completely absurd.

It would be like looking at John Kerry losing in 2004 and John McCain losing in 2008 and concluding that it’s a bad idea to nominate military veterans for office, especially decorated war heroes. It flies in the face of all the available evidence from downballot races, and it’s going to cut Democrats off from the majority of their political talent.

Worst of all, rather than addressing the party’s political weaknesses, it just underscores one of the most severe ones. Voters can tell that at an elite level, Democrats remain devoted to some braindead versions of identity politics, and they don’t like it.

Democrats shouldn’t ignore their bench

In the Trump-Biden-Trump swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, Democrats have done quite well in downballot statewide elections over recent years.

Seats in these key states are currently held by Democrats who are African American (Raphael Warnock), Hispanic (Ruben Gallego), gay (Tammy Baldwin), Jewish (Jon Ossoff, Josh Shapiro, and Elissa Slotkin), and women (Katie Hobbs and Gretchen Whitmer, plus the aforementioned Baldwin and Slotkin). If you throw in the Clinton-Biden-Trump state of Nevada, you get two more women, one of whom is Jewish and one of whom is Hispanic.