Bernie's Campaign Killed by Diversity?

The 2020s will likely be defined by the push for diversity among the Democrats and left wing parties throughout the Western world. Nothing will be considered good enough unless there is adequate representation of each group. The recent DNC convention shows as much: 

Top Latino activists and politicians are criticizing the lack of representation during this week's Democratic National Convention. 

Only three Latino speakers have their own speaking slot in the Democratic National Convention’s primetime lineup: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.

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 "I’d be lying to you if I said that I’m not disappointed that there aren't more Latinos and Latinas generally speaking on that program," Castro told MSNBC Saturday, adding that he's also disappointed that there isn't someone who is Native or Muslim American speaking during this primetime hour.

"You think about the beautiful coalition that has become the Democratic Party over the last few years, I'm not sure right now that it's fully represented on that stage," he added.

 USA Today

Ultimately, we can imagine that every single political campaign will see its diversity credentials brought into question. 

Indeed, it is potentially the case that some campaigns may even sabotage themselves by putting too much faith in diversity, as may be the case with the Sanders campaign. Some have put forth the theory that the bid of Bernie Sanders to win the nomination was ultimately destroyed by clamoring about making the staff more representative, which led to incompetent people being placed in key positions. 

Part of the explanation for this lies in the 2020 iteration of the Sanders campaign being predicated on multiple concessions to bad-faith critics. Immediately upon his official entry into the race last February, Sanders apologized for the 2016 campaign having been “too white and too male-oriented.” ... To make amends and preempt any future identity-related attacks, the 2020 campaign staff was heavily diversified. And at least in the case of South Carolina—in retrospect the most important primary state of the 2020 cycle—many of these personnel were hobbled by remarkable incompetence, while internal campaign criticism became impossible.

 Much of the day-to-day logistics of the Sanders South Carolina campaign were run de facto by Nina Turner, a talented orator and popular media surrogate, but someone whose skill set was clearly not suited to bolstering the image of a socialist from Vermont among southern black voters. For one thing, Turner’s political background was in metro Cleveland, which provides no necessary insight into best practices for winning over elderly, churchgoing black Democrats in the Deep South.

 In November 2019, Turner installed Jessica Bright as state director. Former staff members said Bright, who served as a Hillary Clinton delegate at the 2016 national convention, was hired in large part because her mother had filled the seat of Clementa Pinckney—the state senator killed in the 2015 Charleston church shooting. The idea was that such a transactional arrangement might compel the mother to endorse Sanders. “She couldn’t spell, she couldn’t speak coherently, and her mother ended up endorsing Biden,” one anguished former staffer recalled.2 Not only did basic tasks go unfulfilled, phone-banking and canvassing data were outright fabricated, multiple former staffers alleged, and sent to the national campaign headquarters to give the false impression of good progress being made in the state. “But you can’t say anything,” one staffer recounted thinking, “be­cause you’d be called a racist.” Communicating rationally with the twenty- and thirtysomething campaign staffers who dominated the South Carolina operation, this person said, was virtually impossible—almost like some kind of impenetrable generational and ideological divide had been erected. “I felt like I was in a daycare facility. These kids were just so clueless, and so full of themselves,” the person lamented. “It was a really dystopian feeling to work there, it was not like anything I’d ever been involved with.”3

American Affairs Journal 

Had Sanders received reliable data, he may have campaigned entirely different. Had there been a competent staff, the campaign may have made headway instead of rotting on the vine. 

While these sorts of what-ifs are impossible to resolve, it is certainly worth considering, especially as this problem looks like it will not be going away anytime soon.