A longtime commenter asserted yesterday that Kamala Harris was a “DEI” candidate because she was chosen for her race and sex, generating considerable pushback.
I’m actually sympathetic to the idea that Joe Biden boxed himself in with an early pledge to choose a woman as his running mate and was then pressured into narrowing that to “a woman of color” in the wake of the George Floyd protests, limiting his options considerably. While it’s certainly much larger than it would be in the Republican Party, the pool of women of color who are plausibly prepared to be President is relatively small. Given those constraints, I thought Harris clearly the best option (and said so before he picked her) but likely not the person who would have been most helpful to Biden in crucial swing states.
But, as Matt Bernius noted,
The idea of a single “best possible candidate” is already fiction. Further, in a multiethnic party that relies significantly on women’s votes, focusing on a specific race and gender mix can rationally be seen as part of what makes a good candidate.
As Gustopher mentioned, Harris will most likely be selecting a white man as a running partner (my bet is Governor Roy Cooper). And there are good racial and gender reasons for narrowing the list to just white men. Will that make them a DEI pick then?
Also, I’m curious, out of all of the potential VP nominees Trump could have selected, do you think Mike Pence was the best option? Or was he just the conservative equivalent of DEI? Likewise with Trump, why did he opt for such an incredibly young VP in Vance versus far more experienced policy makers like Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, or Gov. Doug Burgum?
NYT opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen expands on that thought in “If Kamala Harris Is a D.E.I. Candidate, So Is JD Vance.”
All politics is, at some level, identity politics — the business of turning identity into power, be it the identity of a candidate or demographic group or political party or region of the country. For modern presidential and vice-presidential candidates, one of their most valuable assets is their life story. Some elements of that story are bequeathed at birth, but what makes politicians successful is their talent at narrating that story in a manner that allows voters to see some version of themselves and their own aspirations in the candidate. This kind of storytelling, embedded in American archetypes and ideals, has shaped our politics.
Vance’s entire business and political career has flowed from his life story, which is embedded in identities he did not choose: Born a “hillbilly,” of Scottish-Irish descent, he grew up in poverty, son of a single mother who was addicted to drugs. Overcoming this adversity, these disadvantages, lies at the core of his personal narrative. His ascent would hardly be so remarkable if he started from a life of middle-class comfort. But no one is portraying Vance’s elevation to the Republican ticket as the outcome of some kind of illegitimate identity politics, nor is Vance perceived as having benefited from a political form of affirmative action.
And yet he almost certainly did. Race is not the only kind of diversity that gets noticed and embraced. Elite institutions love up-by-your-bootstraps Americans, and that archetype is all over Vance’s life story. A promising white candidate from a county that sends few students to an elite college like Yale would get a strong look, even if that person’s grades and test scores were less impressive than other applicants’. (To be clear, I have no idea what kind of grades or scores Vance had.) Regardless of race, applicants from working-class backgrounds, especially if they were the first in their family to attend college, are deemed to add class diversity.
[…]
In truth, it is pretty common for white men to get a leg up for some special part of their identity. Yet these men do not get labeled D.E.I. beneficiaries. People don’t worry that their surgeon or pilot or president was a D.E.I. hire, even though he might have gotten his spot at an elite college because he was the son of a wealthy alumnus or because he happened to come from a state that is historically underrepresented in elite higher education. Indeed, he might have impressed an admissions officer with an unusual story of overcoming obstacles — a family rived by poverty and addiction in a forgotten corner of the country.
I wonder: Why do people look at Vance’s life story and achievements and see a vice president and they look at Harris’s life story and achievements and see a D.E.I. candidate?
Polgreen’s inclusion of legacy admits, who are almost by definition children of privilege, muddies the water here but the larger point is interesting.
Objectively, Harris was considerably more qualified for the Presidency when she was chosen than Vance is now. She had served 7 years as a big city DA, six as state Attorney General, and almost four years as a United States Senator. He spent four years as a junior Marine public affairs specialist and has been in the Senate for a year and a half. She had 56 years of life experience at inauguration; he’ll have 40.
At the same time, yes, I think Vance’s “diversity” is more impressive than hers. Yes, being a woman and, especially, Afro-Jamaican-Indian present significant challenges even today. But she was also born into privilege. Both of her parents are highly-educated professionals with elite pedigrees (both with UC-Berkley PhDs). While perhaps too much is made of it, Vance’s up-by-the-bootstraps story is real and earned.
Further, while it’s hard to fathom Donald Trump’s mental processes, I don’t think he or anyone on his staff said, “Hey, we need a white Appalachian under 40 to lend diversity to the ticket.” Rather, there were a handful of nominally qualified Republicans who had demonstrated sufficient loyalty to Trump and their merits were considered in some fashion. My guess is that Trump wanted to double down on his appeal to the White working class and thought Vance helped him more than Burgum, who had seemed to be the leading alternative.
So, no, I don’t think Vance is a “DEI candidate” in any meaningful sense.
Of course, at this point, neither is Harris. She’s the hands-on favorite for the Democratic nomination for a number of reasons, most notably because she’s the sitting Vice President. How she got there is largely irrelevant at this juncture.
