Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign stop in Flint, Michigan, March 9, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

As Ramesh noted, a recent Pew Research poll asked registered Democratic voters and Democrat-leaning independents whether they were bothered by the fact that the Democratic Party’s likely nominee was a white man in his seventies. Here are the results, disaggregated by race, gender, and educational attainment:

That many white liberals care more about color of the nominee’s skin than their co-partisans of color should not be surprising to anyone familiar with the strange contours of the Democratic coalition; signaling “solidarity” with “people of color” is a central feature of wealthy white progressivism. (Performative “solidarity” is much less painful than a tax hike.)

The other striking — though perhaps more intuitive — divide occurs along educational lines. Fifty-eight percent of postgraduate-degree holders were dismayed by Biden’s demographic profile, compared with only 24 percent of non-college-educated voters who felt the same. This is consistent with the emphasis placed on critical theory and race-guilt at American colleges and universities, where the bluster about “privilege” serves a similar function to the “solidarity” signaled by wealthy white liberals — it serves as a useful diversion from the much more dangerous class-warfare game that could bite universities with multimillion-dollar endowments where it actually hurts.