Democrats Had a Diverse Field, Then the White-Man Surge

Just a few months ago, straight white men were a minority among Democrats' 2020 candidates. In fact, as Nate Silver points out at FiveThirtyEight.com, only one such guy (John Delaney) even existed among 11 major candidates. Since then, however, things have changed in a big way. The last 11 entrants into the race have been, yes, straight white men, with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio the last to join the fray. As Noah Berlatsky puts it at NBC News, "You can't spit in Iowa without hitting some white guy you've probably never heard of wearing a suit and begging to shake your hand."

So what's going on? "I’ll leave the longer explanation of this to others, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s a certain type of privilege in all these white guys thinking they can just drop into the race at the last minute after everyone else has been working their butts off for months," writes Silver. Berlatsky sounds a similar theme, ticking off three major reasons for the white-man surge: "history, entitlement and prejudice." Read Silver's full post here, and Berlatsky's here. (More Election 2020 stories.)