… Democratic voters have largely accepted the argument that Trump is a unique menace to the nation whose electoral career has benefited from the existence of racist and sexist attitudes in the public. And many have drawn a natural inference from this premise: the Democratic Party should maximize its chances of defeating the president in 2020 by nominating an “electable” candidate to oppose him. What does electability apparently mean to these voters? A candidate who doesn’t come across as an extremist, who doesn’t threaten to push the hot buttons of race and gender, who promises to flip those all-important midwestern battleground states from red back to blue. A candidate like, say, Joe Biden. CONT.
David A. Hopkins, Boston College