New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio speaks with HUD Secretary Julian Castro sitting nearby. December 16, 2016. Photo courtesy of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The mantra today for many Democrat hopefuls is that racism, misogyny and class oppression are everywhere. But as Victor Davis Hanson notes in American Greatness, no one is “better acquainted with such endemic hatred than upscale Democratic candidates, who have supposedly lived through such ordeals.”
Elizabeth Warren, senator (D-Mass.) – For years she claimed Native American ancestry. An embattled Warren ironically took a DNA test that only proved her critics’ contention that she was no more of Native American heritage than the vast majority of Americans.
Robert Francis O’Rourke – A rich white male who grew up in affluence has adopted the name “Beto,” an abbreviation for the Spanish “Roberto.” The Spanish-speaking, Irish-American O’Rourke, with a wink and nod, has assumed a useful near-Latino identity.
Bill de Blasio – The mayor of New York City was actually born with the alliterative European name Warren Wilhelm Jr. With today’s politically correct calibrations of avoiding Northern European nomenclature, the Latinate “de Blasio” apparently ranks higher than the overtly German “Wilhelm.”
Julian Castro – The former mayor of San Antonio emphasizes his common-man Latino roots even though he never spoke fluent Spanish. Castro’s parents were solidly middle-class, and he took Latin and Japanese in school.
Cory Booker – The senator (D-N.J.) often poses as a spokesman for the African American inner city and is hoping to gain the nomination on the strength of his minority bona fides. But Booker grew up in the affluent and nearly all-white suburbs of New Jersey, the child of two IBM executives who sent him to Stanford, after which he became a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate.
Kamala Harris – The senator (D-Calif.) attacked former Vice President Joe Biden in a recent debate by claiming that his opposition some 40 years ago to court-mandated busing had endangered her own chance at a good primary-school education. Perhaps. But the city of Berkeley, where Harris briefly lived in as a child before migrating to Canada, was well-integrated. A local school district, not a federal court, instituted the busing program she joined. Both of her parents have PhDs, one a former Stanford professor, the other a scientist who often flew the young Harris to India to visit relatives.
Bernie Sanders – The senator (D-Vt.) is running again as an unapologetic socialist, waging rhetorical class warfare against the haves on behalf of the have-nots. But while Sanders was often underemployed in his earlier years, after a lifetime of public office he is now a millionaire. He reportedly owns three homes and earned nearly $1 million from book royalties in both 2016 and 2017.
