The B-team: Are Beto, Biden and Bernie the best Democrats can offer?

In New Hampshire in recent days, Democratic voters who spoke to the Guardian laid out a simple answer. Yes, it would be nice to have a woman or a minority candidate but the focus must remain on removing Donald Trump from office. Whether the most electable candidate will be a woman or a member of a minority remains to be seen, but undecided voters are willing to consider a white man if he is determined to have the best shot at the White House.

“I think Democrats, myself included, are willing to wait for that [for a woman nominee] in order to simply win, to get Trump out of office,” said Marilee Lin, 54, a prep school teacher who watched O’Rourke speak in Plymouth. “At this point it’s kind of a pragmatic election. We’ll regress even further if we can’t win.”…

For Robinson, it’s not enough for straight white men to talk about their privilege: they need to understand it, he says, to show how they have confronted it and to display policies that will make the country more equitable.

“There’s nothing worse than someone explaining that they have privilege and then keep operating the same way they’ve always operated,” he said. “Voters more and more don’t want lip service, we don’t want you to stay on beat in our churches or tell us your favorite hip-hop album. We want you to be able to talk about what policies and what systemic changes you will make. It’s not enough to sort of feel peoples’ pain. I’m not interested in a therapist.”