Letters to the Editor: No, Joe Biden isn’t the overwhelming choice among people of color

To the editor: Columnist Jonah Goldberg implies that black voters’ conservatism and superior pragmatism will lead former Vice President Joe Biden to triumph against his more liberal Democratic presidential primary opponents who “pander” on race to “woke white liberals.”

But Goldberg’s assertion that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) victory came from white liberals acting out their “white savior” complex is wrong; her broad coalition was driven primarily by young voters across racial lines.

Last month the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of black voters, far more than other groups, were undecided as to who they supported for president. A majority of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) supporters were people of color and also female.

Regrettably, Goldberg refers to people of color as “non-white.” It’s unsurprising that his level of “wokeness” comports with his misguided, fallacious assertions about the electorate and the coalition ready to beat President Trump in 2020.

Margaret Okuzumi, Sunnyvale, Calif.

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To the editor: Goldberg claims that “white liberals have become ideological, shedding the coalitional and transactional orientation that long defined Democratic Party politics.” He asserts that Trump “smashed” the polar opposite but historically equally rigid “ideological purity that consumed and ultimately bedeviled the Republican Party.”

Wrong. Here’s what happened.

Trump along with GOP majorities in the House and Senate for two years delivered “ideological purity” to Republican voters by appointing two new U.S. Supreme Court justices and by gutting or killing numerous regulations meant to protect our physical and financial health.

In exchange, formerly level-headed, work-with-the-other-side members of Congress, exemplified by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), stopped negotiating with Democrats and became fiercely loyal to Trump, apparently able to stomach the president’s incompetence and lies.

Democrats can’t be “transactional” or form cross-party coalitions, as Trump’s grip on the GOP demanding his version of ideological purity makes that impossible.

Mark Davidson, Santa Ana