Don't Play Their Game

Several times recently I've seen a meme purporting to show the diversity of newly elected Democrats compared to Republicans.

Don’t play their game. The relevant question is why do Democrats vote against minority and diverse candidates election after election if they are Republicans?

This year saw several firsts for Republicans despite Democratic opposition. Marsha Blackburn (R) became the 1st women senator elected from Tennessee and Kristi Noem (R) the 1st women governor of South Dakota.

Did Democrats support African American John James (R) competitive bid for the Senate in Michigan?

What about the reelection campaign of the daughter of Haitian refugees, Mia Love (R) in Utah? (Fortunately, it now looks like she will win).  UPDATE: Mia Love lost to a pasty, white, male Democrat.

Were Democrats rooting for Young Kim (R), who would have been the 1st Korean-American women to enter Congress?

Would they have been happy if Elizabeth Heng (R), daughter of Cambodian refugees, had been elected to Congress from her California district?

Why do they studiously ignore that the first Indian-American female governor (Nikki Haley) and first Latina governor (Susanna Martinez) were Republicans?

It’s nothing new. They probably don’t even realize that Tim Scott (R) was the first African-American elected to the Senate since the end of Reconstruction from the states of the former Confederacy and that Scott got his start in national politics when the Tea Party supported his insurgent bid to gain the R nomination in his congressional district running against Strom Thurmond’s grandson.

It’s nothing new. In 2006, when Barack Obama was elected to the Senate, Democrats refused to vote for viable R African American candidates for governor in PA and Ohio and for Senate in MD.

It's nothing new.  Democrats put extra effort into defeating diverse Republican candidates in order to continue to claim the GOP lacks diversity.

It’s nothing new. In 2002, Teddy Kennedy openly boasted about successfully blocking the nomination of the eminently qualified Miguel Estrada to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit because he didn’t want to give GW Bush the opportunity to elevate him to the Supreme Court and have the Republicans appointing the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.

Get Democrats to admit they will vote for a pasty, white, male D over any Republican no matter how diverse. It’s the truth, after all.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with valuing ideology over diversity.  There is something wrong with denying that's what you are doing.