DAVID MARCUS: Manhattan primary proves it's White Democrats who won't vote for minorities
Democrats are apoplectic over the Supreme Court’s recent decision barring race as a factor in drawing up congressional districts, overturning decades of gerrymandering. But what is really being brought into sharp relief is the party’s outdated and preposterous views on race relations.
The argument that Democrats are making is that, just like in the 1960s, White voters will not elect non-White candidates and therefore we must have Black, Hispanic and Asian majority districts, even though Black politicians, like former President Barack Obama and a host of others show this to be nonsense.
In fact, it turns out that one of the few districts in the country where White voters will apparently only vote for White candidates is New York’s 12th District, or as I like to call it, the White Guy District.
While there is a smattering of minor minority candidates on the ballot, according to the Kalshi prediction market, the only candidates who even appear in the rankings are Jake Schlossberg, Micah Lasher, Alex Bores and George Conway. All White, all male.
A glossy New York Magazine cover last week celebrated the four White men vying to win the coveted NY 12 nod on the tony Upper East and West sides of Manhattan, this despite the district being only 62% white.
The cover simply erased the existence of all the minority candidates. NY 12 by God, will send a White man to Congress!
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How on Earth can all four of the competitive candidates be White men in a district that is so diverse? What are the odds?
The district in question has been held by Rep. Jerry Nadler since 1992, and it has always been drawn, intentionally, as a majority White district in a sea of ethnic enclaves.
Until a few years ago, this district ran from Bensonhurst in South Brooklyn, jumped the East River, skipped Chinatown and ran up the Upper West Side to ensure that a majority of constituents were, let's just say, eligible to join the Whites-ony beach club that counts as a member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
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This has always been a district that captures more White people than a two-for-one sale on boat shoes.
In this primary, we have Jake Schlossberg, a member of the Kennedy clan, George Conway, the ex-husband of former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, and two other guys who look a lot like Jake Schlossberg and George Conway, except one has a beard.
They all hate Trump, of course, and say all the right things about race, gender, sexuality and the importance of diversity. But there they are on a magazine, looking like the Beatles.
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Only one of two things can be happening here. Either, Democrats are convinced that White people in Manhattan are so racist and misogynist, that they will only elect a White dude, or they really believe that congressional districts should be divided up by race regardless of what the Supreme Court says.
Clearly, the party and the donors decided this seat was going to a White guy, come hell or high water.
And this is nothing new for Democrats. Former President Joe Biden came right out and said that he would choose a Black woman to be his pick for Supreme Court justice, and just like that, 95% of the country was out of the running for one of nine lifetime seats on our highest court.
This obsession with race that Democrats have is entirely at odds with the reality on the ground in America.
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Take Byron Donalds, who is trouncing his opponent in the polls for the GOP Florida gubernatorial nomination. And why did Democrat Abigail Spanberger recently get elected governor of Virginia over Winsome Earle-Sears, a Black woman who Republicans nominated and voted for?
Why are White Republicans perfectly happy to send Black men and women to Congress or governors' mansions, but White Democrats in New York’s wealthiest neighborhood need a field of only four White guys to choose from?
Democrats increasingly view our nation as a group of individual racial fiefdoms: Somalis in Minneapolis, Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, Arabs in Dearborn, Michigan. Their assumption is that these people will send their own to Congress, as indeed increasingly happens.
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Democrats don’t want to believe in a colorblind society in which a candidate of any race could win any district, even though that is exactly what most districts are, because without the constant and amorphous threat of racism, they lose power.
As we saw with the Southern Poverty Law Center scandal, in which the group was allegedly funding the racists it claimed to be fighting, the Left needs racism. It is its ideological and financial mother’s milk, and it means Democrats must believe the worst about not just Republicans, but about themselves.
The American people, by and large, have moved on from the racial obsession that still animates Democratic leadership, and if things go as expected, we will have proof of this in November.
That is because if Donalds becomes governor of Florida, race will have nothing to do with it, and when one of the four haircuts running in NY 12 goes to Congress, it will only be because he is White.