It's not a Tea Party paranoid fantasy after all: The Democratic Party really is becoming a party where straight white men aren't welcome.
A new political action committee has three simple words for “people in positions of privilege, specifically straight white men” running for office: “Can you not?”
Can You Not PAC was started “by white men, for white men” and is dedicated to letting straight white dudes know that they’re not always the best candidates to run for office, especially in “progressive, urban districts.”
“We challenge brogressives and others to reject any notion that they are uniquely qualified or positioned to seek political office in districts that don’t need them,” the PAC’s site reads. “As well-represented white dudes, we feel it is our obligation to know when to shut up and Not.”
The Can You Not website features of photo of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with her famous quotation: "People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine."
And if that weren't point-blank enough, the website declares:
We plan to give a handful of Democratic endorsements and (dis)endorsements before the June primaries and November election. Our advisory board of progressive women, LGBTQ folks, and people of color are researching and reviewing all of the potential endorsements and will make final decisions on those candidates by June 2016. We are raising money with the intent of defeating mediocre white dudes and elevating some of the best underrepresented candidates of 2016.
Slate in-house feminist Christina Cauterucci just loves Can You Not because:
Women are better than men on the environment, better than men on incarceration reform, and better than men on issues of reproductive justice.
Can You Not seems to be a continuation of the war against "Bernie Bros" that Hillary Clinton-supporting feminists have been waging ever since Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign started attracting hordes of young male Democrats with liberal political beliefs. The idea was to shame those dudes back onto the "reservation," as Hillary herself would probably put it.
But there's some irony at work here: One of the two Colorado "white dudes" who set up Can You Not, 25-year-old Jack Teter, is actually a trans-dude, as he told MSNBC (the other founder, 29-year-old Kyle Huelsman, is apparently cis). Since the "T" in "LGBTQ" stands for "trans," doesn't that mean that Teter doesn't have to abide by the Can You Not ban?
I smell something self-serving.