The Associated Press, in their role as Democrat Operatives With Bylines, recently had a Tweet and a related article about the Democrat Party thinking about their voting base, in particular, White men.

That’s left Democrats wondering whether the nominee should be someone who can cut deep into Trump’s base, picking off large numbers of working-class whites, whether it’s enough to win over affluent, college-educated, suburban men and whether the party is moving too far left to win them both.

“The white male vote is indispensable, it’s a part of any winning coalition,” said Democratic pollster Ronald Lester, who worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. He noted that successful national Democrats perform well with white men, and that includes Barack Obama, whose strength among white men in the Rust Belt helped fuel his White House victories in 2008 and 2012.

AP being who they are, the article does not really think about that further, but simply talks about the GOP steadily losing college-educated white males and grabbing some examples of men who say they will likely vote Democrat. Ignored by AP were the huge number of comments on their Twitter blog, which were a lot more revealing:

  • Have you tried calling them racist? I hear that tests well.
  • That bridge is already burned
  • Good luck with that. After you beat me and call me all kinds of names. You want my vote? I don’t think so.
  • But they hate us, they tell us that all the time. Apparently, we are some damn boogeyman to them. No thanks.
  • Democrats can forget about white male votes because they forgot about our interests a long time ago 

Perhaps the Democrat Party could take a look at some of their other voters, like Dr. Catlyn Collins, an assistant professor of Sociology and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies​ at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of a book titled Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. Recently Ms Collins drove past a road construction site and had a bit of chat with one of the crew:

If she thinks this is a problem, perhaps she should have aimed her well-educated mind at the company employing this poor schlub. But as this comment at the Gunfree Zone blog pointed out, that’s not what this was really about:

This is why so many on the Right get accused of being anti-academic.  Because this is the shit that we see that makes us hate academia.

I am proud of my Ph.D.  Mine is in engineering, and I walk a factory floor every day in composite toe boots.  I don’t act like I am better than the people in assembly.  I am there to help them by solving problems with my skills.

This type of academic elitism is all about reminding the non-academic non-elite about their place.

Think about this guy.  He works hard in the cold rain of the Midwest right now.  At the end of the day he might go to a bar with some coworkers and have a beer, every part of his body hurting.  That is the kind of toxic masculinity that this professor raves against.

As numerous Left commentators noted, Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was due in large part to White voters finally acting like….. an Identity Politics group. White voters thinking was, “why not us?” And all the abusive screaming from the Left about how their “White Privilege” means they’re not allowed to think this way, has not only had no effect, it reminds these voters, particularly white men, that their traditional, working-class left-wing parties, are increasingly filled with people who utterly despise them.

Thus it is no surprise to find that the early stages of the Democrat nomination for President in 2020 are being dominated by one of the Stalest, Palest and Malest of old, white men in America.

That’s Joe Biden, currently leading the Democrat nomination race from twenty-plus contenders, and by substantial margins.

In any other context this would be extraordinary. Biden is a hopeless, brainless old hack. A two-time loser in these nomination races. A swamp-creature buried in Washington D.C. politics for almost fifty years since first being elected to the US Senate in 1972. A gaffe-prone, 76-year old politician so dumb that in the 1988 nomination race he plagiarised the speeches of the almost equally hopeless British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock. A man with private and public behaviours that are distinctly disturbing in the age of #MeToo. And now a man who is showing clear signs of rapid mental decline since just 2018, when he gave that now infamous little spiel at the Council on Foreign Relations about pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor looking into the Burisma Gas company on which his son, Hunter Biden, had a cushy Director’s position.

That was classic Biden: the casual tough-guy act; his connections; the crooked bad guys; the triumph at the end. And all of this delivered by a non-stuttering, fluid delivery. That is not the guy of 2019.

So how is he winning so far?

The explanation lies in there being three “lanes” in the Democrat Party at present.

First, the traditional, hard-line Old Left – which sees Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren competing.

Second, the Woke, Identity Politics New Left, in which the vast majority of candidates are competing.

Third is the “moderate” lane; the part that’s not Woke, not into Identity Politics, and not that keen on vast, new government schemes beyond what already exist in the form of the troubled Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid programs. The lane that includes the large majority of those white male voters forming Trump’s base, which the Democrats are desperate to “cut deep into“.

Despite all his handicaps, Joe Biden finds himself all alone in this lane, and his success so far has intimidated other candidates from attacking him on his record, which is otherwise a target-rich environment. Biden is rapidly disavowing most of these past positions to reduce his exposure, as well as reducing his exposure overall, but it’s very early days and I can’t see him escaping these attacks as the field narrows.

And this is where it starts to become fun. Given the concerns raised about the Democrats getting enough of that “indispensable” white male vote, Biden has on his side the knowledge that such voters are comfortable with him and very uncomfortable with his opponents, plus knowing that it’s a narrow front to attack him without also attacking them and burning them off, as Hillary did with her infamous “Deplorables” remark.

Either way I’m looking forward to the prospect of one of these Woke Democrats destroying Biden on their favourite fields of battle and then crashing and burning in the General Election – or sitting there pulling their punches and grinding their teeth in months of slow-burning anger as they support Biden trying to defeat the Evil Orange One.

Can you imagine what it will be like to support a person who represents much of what you despise because he’s up against a person who represents everything you despise – and all because you need the votes of many of those you despise. It’s a delicious concept.