{"id":9019,"date":"2015-04-21T16:19:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T16:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9019"},"modified":"2015-04-21T16:19:20","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T16:19:20","slug":"no-diversity-on-democratic-bench-cmon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9019","title":{"rendered":"No diversity on Democratic bench? C&#039;mon!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The Hill newspaper has a headline that shouts that actual and potential Democratic candidates for president lack &#8220;diversity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Democratic &#8220;bench&#8221; is too, um, bland &#8230; or some such thing.<\/p>\n<p>Hold on here.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/pundits-blog\/presidential-campaign\/239460-democrats-have-no-bench-and-no-diversity-in<\/p>\n<p>The trio of mug shots that accompany the news story attached here tell me something quite different.<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>Hillary Rodham Clinton<\/strong> is, quite obviously, a woman. She was first lady for eight years from 1993 until 2001. She served in the U.S. Senate and then as secretary of state. Enough said there.<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>Jim Webb<\/strong> is a former U.S. senator from Virginia. He&#8217;s a Vietnam War veteran. He saw combat as a Marine. He served in the Reagan administration, not exactly a bastion of progressive principles.<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>Bernie Sanders<\/strong> is an independent U.S. senator from Vermont. He&#8217;s a card-carrying, say-it-loud-and-proud socialist. He makes no bones about his share-the-wealth philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t mention Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who keeps saying she isn&#8217;t running.<\/p>\n<p><em>Oops.<\/em> I just did.<\/p>\n<p>Those three individuals look pretty diverse to me. They each bring a different set of governing principles to a presidential campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Only one of them, Clinton, has declared her candidacy.\u00a0Webb has formed an exploratory committee, while Sanders is keeping his options open.<\/p>\n<p>I get what The Hill means, though, about the lack of &#8220;diversity.&#8221; It refers to the Republican field that so far has two Hispanic candidates &#8212; Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. There well might be a woman, Carly Fiorina, in the mix as well. An African-American, Ben Carson, is likely to run.<\/p>\n<p>Let us not dismiss the potential Democratic primary field as being bland and one-note boring.<\/p>\n<p>Among the possible field of three &#8212; Clinton, Webb and Sanders &#8212; one can find plenty of <em>ideological<\/em> diversity.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hill newspaper has a headline that shouts that actual and potential Democratic candidates for president lack &#8220;diversity.&#8221; The Democratic &#8220;bench&#8221; is too, um, bland &#8230; or some such thing. Hold on here. http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/pundits-blog\/presidential-campaign\/239460-democrats-have-no-bench-and-no-diversity-in The trio of mug shots that accompany the news story attached here tell me something quite different. * Hillary Rodham Clinton &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9019\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No diversity on Democratic bench? C&#039;mon!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[588,597,870,1333,1399,1560,1636,2140,2486,2892,3902,4537,4762],"class_list":["post-9019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-ben-carson","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-carly-fiorina","tag-democratic-field","tag-diversity","tag-elizabeth-warren","tag-ethnic-diversity","tag-hillary-rodham-clinton","tag-jim-webb","tag-marco-rubio","tag-republican-field","tag-ted-cruz","tag-the-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}