The biggest missed political opportunity in recent memory is probably Deval Patrick’s decision, after losing quite a bit of sleep, not to run for president in 2016.



At the time, the path seemed fairly clear: The former Massachusetts governor could run as Barack Obama had, on unifying optimism, progressive politics, and a strong connection to the black voters who make up a pillar of the primary electorate.

Hillary Clinton’s team was, Darren Sands reported, quietly afraid of him. And the results of that election left Patrick intensely frustrated.

One reason for that is obvious: Clinton was a far weaker candidate than the media and Democratic establishment thought.

The other possible reason just as obvious, but less discussed: Patrick could have won the primary. The Democratic primaries, as they are currently built, favor a black candidate. The winning formula in recent years has been to build a coalition from older black voters plus another group: white progressives for Obama; white moderates for Clinton. And the Democratic electorates in Deep South states, which vote early in the primary process, are dominated by black voters. That was where Clinton won in 2016, despite no particular attention to the region, and where Bernie Sanders lost it.

“When Southern black voters united behind a Democratic candidate, the South becomes a formidable firewall that is hard to overcome for any candidate who performs poorly among this group, which comprises the base of the Democratic coalition,” wrote Seth McKee, a political scientist at Texas Tech, in a compelling new study of the 2016 election in the South titled The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be.

McKee’s essay comes with a chart of just how much blacker those Deep South electorates have gotten over the last 14 years. The numbers are dramatic. At the high end, the Democratic electorate in Mississippi was 15% blacker in 2016 than in 2004: