Julian Castro Says Kamala Harris Was Victim of Media Racism

Well, that didn’t take long. On the same day that Sen. Kamala Harris announced that she was dropping her bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination, critics were pouring out of the woodwork to insist that the California senator was the victim of racism.

How else to explain, after all, why a woman of color didn’t perform well in her first presidential campaign? Well, we suppose you could hit the sexism note as well, but that just starts to sound like whining, does it not? So you have to pick one or the other, and fellow presidential candidate Julian Castro chose to go with race (since, conveniently, he can also use it to explain his own flailing campaign).

“To me, they held her to a different standard, a double standard, to other campaigns,” Castro said of the media’s coverage of Kamala Harris. “And I don’t know if it impacted her decision to withdraw from the race or not, but I’m sure it didn’t help.”

In remarks to BuzzFeed News, which has never passed up the chance to publish a good racial grievance story, Castro said that the media portrayed Harris as someone struggling to build support among African-American voters. Which, of course, she was.

“This was a narrative from very early on,” Castro said. “From the earliest critique that she has no black support, the [Congressional Black Caucus] is going other directions. It’s just holding people to different standards.”

Ah, so it is notable that Kamala Harris was one of the first major black female candidates to run for president, but it was NOT notable to point out that black voters weren’t interested? Just trying to keep up here.

“I was disappointed by the treatment her campaign got especially during the last seven days, when you had the Washington Post, New York Times, and Politico writing very gossipy sounding big articles trashing the campaign,” Castro continued.

Well, those stories were based on staffers running to the press to tell the world what shambles the campaign was in. And, it turned out, those stories were quite relevant.

But okay, Julian, what should the media and the Democratic National Committee do to make sure candidates of color get a fair shake?

“I hope that the DNC will reevaluate its threshold,” Castro said of the debates. “What it’s resulting in is a lack of diversity on the debate stage. It’s also clear that some have been able to potentially buy their way on stage. I don’t think that was the original intention with putting thresholds like this in place, but we need to make sure that voters have the opportunity to hear from a range of candidates.”

Far be it from us to defend the DNC, of all entities, but we’re pretty sure the “individual donors” threshold was specifically put in pace to make sure no candidate COULD simply buy their way to the stage. Furthermore, the idea that any political organization should modify its requirements until there is a sufficient show of “diversity” on stage is just the kind of whacked-out theory that has people leaving the Democratic Party in droves. Hell, you might as well demand quotas.

Kamala Harris’s campaign is coming to an end because she was a poor candidate who failed to drum up excitement about her presidential platform. Period, end of story. Mr. Castro’s campaign will soon meet a similar fate. It’s just the way it goes. Blaming racism in the media or some kind of structural unfairness in the DNC is just pathetic.