It’s All About Electability This Election Cycle…

The rules are the rules, are the rules. When a can­di­date decides to run for pres­i­dent of the United States, he or she has to be mature enough to know that he or she will have to appeal to a wide cross-sec­tion of peo­ple, raise a lot of mon­ey, and run a near-flaw­less cam­paign, which if he or she is lucky will res­onate with peo­ple. As such, mes­sag­ing, like­abil­i­ty, elec­tabil­i­ty, becomes cru­cial to a can­di­date’s viability.

As far as the Democrats run­ning to unseat Donald Trump are con­cerned, they all knew the rules of the game when they decid­ed to enter the race.
It is for that rea­son that I shed no tears for Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Wayne Messam, Corey Booker or any oth­er minor­i­ty can­di­date who drops out or will drop out of the race, then com­plain about the rules. You have noticed that I have not men­tioned Hawai’s, Tulsi Gabbard. I did not for the sim­ple rea­son that I do not believe she sees her­self as a minor­i­ty. Furthermore, I for one, do not see her as a legit­i­mate Democratic can­di­date for the presidency.

The Democratic par­ty which gets its votes large­ly from African Americans and coali­tions in large urban cen­ters still fol­lows the right-wing Republican par­ty in the way it selects its nom­i­nees for pres­i­dent.
I nev­er under­stood why the par­ty need­ed to cater to vot­ers in New Hampshire and Iowa, two states which hard­ly have any black or oth­er sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of minor­i­ty vot­ers?
It is for that rea­son, that by the time the New Hampshire and Iowa vot­ers have had their say in who they want to vote for, the issues impor­tant to minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, (the back­bone of the Democratic par­ty), are either watered down or does­n’t exist on the par­ty’s plat­form any longer.

Despite that, I do not believe that minor­i­ty can­di­dates should com­plain about not being on the debate stage because of the rules. They all agreed to the rules when they decid­ed to run. What they should be focused on is mak­ing sure that the par­ty’s pri­ma­ry vot­ing begins in states in which large minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions reside.
This will not hap­pen in this elec­tion cycle, but the par­ty’s coali­tions should endeav­or to make sure that this prac­tice becomes a thing of the past. 

Julain Castro

A lot of issues came to the fore this cycle, many of the can­di­dates who ran on some of those issues are both white and male, many of them are already gone, they made no impact. It fol­lows there­fore that the con­tention of the minor­i­ty can­di­dates can­not in good faith be that race is the rea­son they are not on the debate stage or were forced to drop out of the race.
Joe Sestak ran on account­abil­i­ty. John Delaney ran on bi-par­ti­san­ship. John Hickenlooper ran on prag­ma­tism. For Jay Inslee, it was cli­mate change. Tim Ryan ran on being a blue-col­lar guy. Eric Swalwell ran on gun con­trol. Seth Moulton ran on his mil­i­tary ser­vice. Mike Gravel ran as an anti-war can­di­date. Michael Bennett ran on prag­ma­tism as well I sup­pose. For Steve Bullock cit­i­zens unit­ed was the issue and for Beto O’rourke, it was immi­gra­tion as well.
None of those issues res­onat­ed sin­gu­lar­ly with pri­ma­ry vot­ers enough, or gen­er­at­ed enough enthu­si­asm to keep those can­di­dates in the race. They all fold­ed their respec­tive campaigns.

That leaves us with what pun­dits and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors say is the sin­gle issue dri­ving Democratic vot­ers, (the need to find a can­di­date who they feel can defeat Donald Trump).
This is no ordi­nary cycle, despite his soar­ing rhetoric and mes­sage of hope and change, was he run­ning this cycle, Barack Obama’s pres­i­den­cy would like­ly not hap­pen.
The anger and deri­sion of the Trump pres­i­den­cy have had mil­lions of Americans almost lit­er­al­ly hold­ing their breaths in antic­i­pa­tion of the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tions when they will be able to exhale.
It is for that rea­son I believe those per­fect­ly good can­di­dates like Booker Harris, Castro and oth­ers got flushed out ear­ly. It is for that rea­son white male can­di­dates with less­er name recog­ni­tion did not make the cut either.

The can­di­dates still in the run­nings, Joe Biden, the for­mer vice-pres­i­dent, well known US Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the young and excit­ing Pete Buttigieg, US Senator Amy Klobuchar from the mid­west and the bil­lion­aires who can finance their own cam­paigns even if they are unable to make the stage, can hard­ly be said to be there because of their skin col­or, but are there because of name recog­ni­tion and their fat bank accounts. Amy Klobuchar a daugh­ter of the mid­west may still be a viable can­di­date even if she is not suc­cess­ful in the Iowa cau­cus­es less than a month away.
Democrats sent pack­ing this cycle, black, white, lati­no, or female, failed the ear­ly elec­tabil­i­ty test that’s it. Nothing about it is racial. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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