Skip to main content
Friday, October 30, 2026Oct 30

This story is free to read.

Cooper’s Eye on the Left: His white privilege on the record

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a declared Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, is interviewed earlier this month on an outdoor patio in Seattle.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a declared Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, is interviewed earlier this month on an outdoor patio in Seattle. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a declared Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, is interviewed earlier this month on an outdoor patio in Seattle.

Inslee first in the pool

For those who trade on this sort of thing, Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee wants voters to know he acknowledges his white privilege. With white women, women of color and men of color also on the 2020 presidential ballot, he wants to get that out there.

“I think I have a humility about being a straight white male that I have never experienced discrimination like so many do,” he told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “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 talked over in a meeting.”

Inslee was answering the question after the anchor said a new CNN/Des Moines Register poll showed only 38 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers would be satisfied with a straight white male nominee.

In case viewers didn’t appreciate him appreciating his white privilege, he added that he’d had a 25-year career of having “as much diversity as possible in the 2,000 people I’ve appointed” and of making “sure the people who work with me have to go through bias training.”