Mr. and Mrs. Nice Guy won’t beat Trump
A fellow journalist friend recently posted photos of Julián Castro from last summer, showing the former presidential candidate in the wee hours of the morning after a long day on the campaign trail in Michigan.
There Castro was: still crisp in his suit, sitting ever-so-properly while chowing on a famed Coney Dog. Oh Julián ... he never stood a chance. He’s the super polite, clean-cut, high-achieving guy you’d be proud to bring home to your Mexican mom and dad. But, ultimately, he was the kind of guy undervalued by an electorate looking for a strong change agent.
Castro’s brainy preparedness and youthful enthusiasm were overlooked on debate stages where many others were also whip-smart and on the young side.
Being Hispanic — potentially the first Latino president — and an effective spokesperson for the border when that region is in such turmoil never gained traction. How could it? The media was too busy writing long-form love poems to Pete Buttigieg. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was depicted as a triple threat (young, gay, war veteran), and he never had to battle the baseline believability test of being “presidential” enough to win (read as: white and male).
Worse, while Castro initially sought to relate to wider national audiences as being just like everyone else, Hispanic voters started getting antsy that he wasn’t effectively emphasizing his identity as the son of an activist Latina mom.
Even as the media took turns elevating the different candidates (the dude who was “born” to be president, the professor, the sassy black prosecutor, the young tech guy, etc., etc.), Castro never really put the glimmer in many assignment editors’ eyes.
Until he dared question Joe Biden, that is. During a debate in mid-September, Castro pressed the former vice president about whether he was backpedaling on his Medicare stance. There was a semantic difference between whether Biden would require those who wanted Medicare coverage to have to “opt in” to a plan or if they would be automatically enrolled and have to “opt out.”
In an instant, Castro went from a boring good boy to an attacker who disrespects the elderly. About a minute later, he was all but forgotten.
I knew his candidacy would never be taken seriously because — despite Donald Trump’s efforts to demonize and deport Latinos — America doesn’t hate us for the most part. It merely overlooks us, indifferent to our contributions to this country’s military legacy, pop music and food culture.
Despite Mexicans having a history in the United States that actually predates the country as a sovereign nation, Hispanics don’t fit neatly within the white-black binary that the sin of slavery set as a foundation for white-nonwhite dynamics.
Not that ethnicity was Castro’s biggest “flaw” as a candidate.
Americans love bad boys and, to a lesser extent, “nasty women” who will snark, fight and defy convention, generating tabloidstyle headlines and fun memes to share.
The days of so-called boring leaders in the White House — like bookish, humble Harry Truman — are long gone. You can say whatever you want about Trump, but he has delivered a level of excitement that, it seems, the American people are gobbling up.
Which brings us to a potential Elizabeth Warren-Julián Castro ticket, now that Castro endorsed her for president. (Long exhale ...) Right now, this country needs strong, steady leaders with the wisdom to walk a fine line between reshaping institutions that need systemic change and reinvigorating the ones that serve the common good but require investment and guidance.
Even if you made the case for Warren and Castro being such leaders, my bet is on an electorate that actually likes swinging from extreme to extreme, studiously avoiding the middle.
But were Trump to give the smart May-December ticket a snappy, hateful nickname and position them as actual rivals — that might be another story.
Trump taught us that simplistic, direct messages that are repeated over and over win the day. The Democrats need to run a ticket that can plainly and quickly explain what the candidates stand for, not against.
Considering that the Democratic Party is having a difficult time figuring out how far to the left it will shift to win younger voters while simultaneously capturing moderate swing votes, it’s going to take a lot more than Mrs. and Mr. Nice Guy to beat Trump.