TheFightBack

Donna Edwards gives her concession speech. Photo: Edwards campaign

The Washington Post worked hard to defeat Donna Edwards, then wasted no time crafting a narrative to explain her loss. “Lesson from Edwards’s loss: ‘It shouldn’t be about race,’” read a Post headline on election night. Edwards’ defeat shows “the limit of the power of identify politics,” Post reporter Bill Turque told WAMU the next day.

‘Identity politics’ refers to candidates highlighting personal attributes, such as gender or race, to convey their fitness for office.

In the Maryland Senate Democratic primary, Edwards, who is black, faced off against her House colleague, Chris Van Hollen, who is white. Both are progressive, Edwards a bit more so.

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Photo courtesy of Baltimore Sun

If Donna Edwards ekes out a victory in Maryland’s Democratic primary Tuesday, she’ll be positioned to become just the second black woman to serve in the Senate. But winning her party’s nomination will be a heavy lift: she’s up against a tough opponent, and the Washington Post.

Recent polls show Edwards trailing her House colleague, Chris Van Hollen, who the Post’s endorsing editorial called “a gifted legislator…[and] the better candidate.”

The Post’s three subsequent editorials on the senate race have contained increasingly shrill attacks on Edwards, calling her: “A Democratic facsimile of Sen. Ted Cruz” who, like the Tea Party, thinks “bipartisan compromise… is apostasy.”

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