It's a point against him, they say, but he assures he's making amends.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington is running for the Democratic nomination in 2020, and like most of the Dem hopefuls was in Austin over the weekend at the SXSW festival. While there, he and the other candidates spoke with a lot of media, including several taking interviews with NBC's Chuck Todd forMeet the Pressor CNN's Jake Tapper forState of the Unionon Sunday morning.
But unlike the other candidates, Inslee had a unique message: sorry I'm a white dude.
In Inslee's case, the interview was with Tapper, who brought up the numbers from the latest CNN/Des Moines Register poll, which he said "shows only 38 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa" would be "satisfied with a straight white male nominee."
"So why are you, as a straight white male, the right person to lead the Democratic party if there's so much skepticism from Democrats in Iowa?"
Inslee was duly rebuked by the voters, and said so.
"I think I have evinced a humility about being a straight white male, that I've never experienced discrimination like so many do." said Inslee. "I've never been pulled over as an African-American teenager by an officer driving through a white neighborhood. I've never been a woman who had been talked over in a meeting. So I've approached this with humility."
Inslee said his career has dedicated to "advancing justice" and "making sure that we have as much diversity as possible."
He listed several other ways he has atoned, including making sure his staff attend "implicit bias' training, his stand against the so-called "Muslim ban" and more. He brought up criminal justice reform, though did not mention President Trump's actions on the same issue.
Although Inslee is showing a meager 1% in that CNN poll, it should be noted that the leader, by far, was white male and former Vice President Joe Biden, with a whopping 27%. You canread more about that poll here.