It is a good thing for the Democratic National Committee that debate stages are not treated under law like drawing congressional districts or the party would be facing some uncomfortable questions.
The Tuesday night contest had top-tier contenders and hangers-on, it had vibrant arguments over the best way to beat President Donald Trump, but there was one thing glaringly absent: Diversity.
Due to what the DNC has described as purely random pick of the draw, the most diverse presidential field in history featured exclusively white debaters on the first night of its second debate and has minority candidates packed onto just one stage — five of 10 contenders in Round 2 are nonwhite — for tonight’s encounter.
But this peculiar circumstance raises a provocative possibility: What if Democrats on Wednesday debate racial questions with the same intensity and candor that their Tuesday counterparts brought to the argument over “Medicare for All” and the contest between left and center on the size and scope of government?
The reality is that such a forthright clash of views on what remains perhaps the most sensitive subject among Democrats and in the country broadly is unlikely. Even contentious subjects — like that between Sen. Bernie Sanders and several moderates over whether private health insurance should be banned — are much easier to engage.
But if candidates on Wednesday are feeling simultaneously candid and courageous, there are important fault lines over race within the party to explore, according to interviews with Democratic operatives and numerous current and former African American elected officials.
These interviews suggest on racial matters there is one big policy matter driving the left-center divide but a host of political matters that relate to how specific candidates and the broader party position themselves.
The policy matter is financial reparations for descendants of slaves. Operatives and elected officials linked to the centrist wing of the party, though not eager to discuss the question on the record, made clear they are deeply worried about the gradual mainstreaming of the idea.
Candidates such as Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren have said they support reparations, though with varying levels of specificity about what this would mean. Others, including front-runner and former Vice President Joe Biden, so far have steered clear of the issue or tried to turn the conversation to broadly expanding opportunity for African Americans, rather than making direct payments to descendants of slaves.
Centrist operatives believe most reparations proposals are unrealistic and unworkable as a practical matter and potentially disastrous as political matter. “A death wish,” said one veteran of recent Democratic administrations who has worked on presidential and congressional campaigns and who believes it would cement perceptions among a critical bloc of moderate white voters that the party is more obsessed with racial grievances than improving the lives of average people regardless of race.
But several African American politicians interviewed before the second debate Wednesday said the hope among some Democrats that the issue would just go away is unrealistic and disrespectful to the party’s largest and most loyal constituency.
“We really need to flesh out candidates’ positions on reparations,” said Abdul El-Sayed, who was a favorite of many liberals in his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Michigan last year. “I think this opening for this conversation is coming too late, but I think it’s coming, and there’s a lot more policy discussion to be had about how you actually operationalize this thing moving forward.”
Beyond reparations, there likely is less ideological division among Democrats on racial matters than on subjects like health care, decriminalizing illegal border crossings, or attitudes toward business. Even centrist candidates, for instance, have criticized mass incarceration policies that disproportionately affect minorities or expressed alarm about high use of deadly force by local police forces in African American neighborhoods.
Even so, there is left vs. center tension about the right way to talk about issues. Much of this stylistic debate swirls around Biden, whose precarious status as front-runner hinges in part on the support he has among African Americans. But campaigns for president are all-encompassing.
“I think any candidate running for president, all candidates running for president — their records should come into play,” said Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin. “Past and present.”
Leaders in the black community have cautioned that candidates who assume the African American community is uniformly liberal do so at their peril.
“Don’t confuse black with liberal. In South Carolina, if you’re African American there is a very high likelihood that you’re a Democrat,” Steve Benjamin, the mayor of Columbus, S.C., wrote in a list of 10 rules for winning his state, in a speech to the centrist group Third Way. “It does not mean liberal. Nearly two-thirds of the Democratic primary electorate here is African American. They are center-left, center-center, and yes — even center-right.”
Trump himself has eagerly moved to steer the national discussion about race. But former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said it’s better to go in depth on proposals that cover minorities now than later in the campaign.
“It is healthier for the party to hash this out in July of 2019 rather than having a large, important Democratic population feeling that they haven’t been heard or that their issues haven’t been appropriately talked through," Reed said. "Because there may become a time that a more dynamic pivot is needed.”
Now, he added, “is when people get to lay out what they’ve done and they also need to practice defending their record on a big stage.”
And those discussions so far have been extensive, said Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist.
“I’m glad that we have seen candidates put some ideas on the table, some more concrete than others, and I’m always going to be looking forward to having them go further,” Gilchrist said. “Having them address communities that have been not always explicitly talked about when it comes to policymaking. I think this campaign has been more explicit about race than past Democratic presidential primaries.”