NH Dem Chair Ray Buckley has all but admitted defeat as regards the DNC kicking NH a few rungs down its primary calendar. Michael Graham explores it in a piece at NHJournal, and the observations are good overall, but I think he left something out.
Related: Presidential Primary Politics – If NH Is Too White to be “First” Then We “Identify” as Black
For years, Buckley, Shaheen, and company have insisted their party’s FITN was secure. Nothing to see here, move along.
Meanwhile, their fellow Democrats were unleashing a political assault on the primary on racial grounds. Some of the biggest names in their party said explicitly that New Hampshire voters weren’t to be trusted when it came to candidates of color. Granite State Democratic primary voters are simply “too White” to be allowed to go first.
We’ve covered the NH is too-white narrative for a while on these pages. An example.
New Hampshire is the hot blonde at the primary party, and the other girls (and boys) are pissed that no one pays attention to them until she’s about to leave the room.
So, the bigger problem, at least for New Hampshire Democrats, is this. They lean heavily on the very narrative being used to undermine the state’s primary status. Sorry, lean is too polite. They lean their body into the left hook (pivot those hips) they deliver at any opportunity.
Racism rants are their moldy bread and butter—the rotten apple of their culture-war eye. The spoiled cream in their supposedly fair-trade, responsibly sourced, low-carbon-footprint latte.
Their hate and systemic racism narrative monster has risen to attack one of its creators (the Dems pale-white party chair has also been a DNC vice-chair for years).
They crapped in their backyard, pissed in their chardonnay, whining about white-this or white while nominating and electing or re-electing pasty white northeastern liberals.
New Hampshire Republicans? They were nominating great candidates for congress in CD2 who, if they were Democrats, would be people of color.
2014 – Marilinda Garcia. (Hispanic)
2016 – Jim Lawrence (Black)
2018 – Steve Negron (Hispanic)
2020 – Steve Negron (Hispanic)
2022 – Bob Burns scruffy but pasty white guy.
Not once did Democrats in that district pick a person of color over the pasty white incumbent. And at no point in any congressional race in NH history have NH Democrats nominated a person of color in a primary or elected one to higher office. White women, check. Gay white guy, check. People of color?
Related: If NH is Too White, Why Did Dems Reject Money for a Program That Attracts Minorities?
When super-white Carol Shea-Porter retired and left the NH CD-1 seat open in 2018, ten Democrats stepped up in that primary, all white.
In the 2012 contest, when Carol vied to get the seat back from Republican Frank Guinta, Caroll Dowdell announced she wanted a shot at the seat, but the state party convinced her to drop out to clear the way for pasty white Carol Shae-Porter. Carol won, but at what price?
The white price. Instead of building an inclusive and diverse bench to elevate candidates of color, they went all white all day and night. At the same time, those “racist” Republicans were nominating people of color almost every cycle, while Democrats were defending pasty white incumbents even when polling suggested it was time for a change on the Democrat side.
Dems accused Republicans of white guilt when they nominated not-so-white candidates, but we don’t have that. They do, and they still couldn’t bring themselves to walk the talk. They chose power and politics over rhetoric which, ironically, has been our position with regard to their white guilt narrative all along.
And it cost them their first in the Nation primary, which will still happen on the GOP side. And we are not doing two, so Dems will have to tag along, take their punishment from the party, with a significant loss of attention, money, and influence, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
