You know who always wins a Democrat primary now?

Whoever checks the most boxes.

The more protected classes a candidate can claim membership in, the more loudly he, er they, can claim to be a “victim,” the more likely “they” are to prevail over traditional politicians.

We have two recent local examples of this phenomenon, but it’s a national trend.

Let’s start with Sen. William Brownsberger of Belmont. Being a Harvard grad, he’s never been mistaken for a particularly manly man. But he’s 68, married and has three kids.

Yet a couple of years ago, Brownsberger made an unexpected public announcement. He suddenly declared that he was bisexual, or as he put it, “queer.”

It seemed an unnecessary thing to say, until you thought about it. Brownsberger represents a woke suburban district that includes a slice of the city of Boston.

I’m sure he’d deny it, but you must assume Brownsberger realized it was only a matter of time until he was Capuano’ed – targeted as an out-of-touch elderly straight white good old boy by someone who wasn’t.

And now that’s exactly what has happened. One of Michelle Wu’s coat holders has decided to run against him, because Brownsberger has been blocking her mad schemes to tax the city’s homeowners back to the Stone Age.

The kamikaze City Hall candidate is named Daniel Lander and he too went to Harvard. But here’s the key to his electability in the Globe’s slobbering puff piece:

“Lander lives in Fenway with his husband.”

Because of course he does. Brownsberger says he’s queer, but he lives with a woman. Lander is the real victim, that is, the real Democrat.

Then you have US Rep. Katherine Clark, born in Connecticut, moved here from Colorado a few years back to Melrose, now lives in Revere… can you say blow-in drifter?

With those credentials, Clark would seem to be immune to any challenges. Her husband has a phony-baloney hack job with the state. She has a trans daughter named Riley (when “they” were arrested for assaulting a Boston cop the police used the kid’s “dead” name of Jared).

Clark even claims her daughter is petrified of global warming, like Katie Porter’s kid in California. Porter is the shrew now running for governor against one of the last heterosexual white Democrat Congressmen, whose main claim to fame is that he used to have a girlfriend who was a Red Chinese spy.

(California Democrats would be even more impressed if Eric Swalwell’s CCP paramour had been a male – then he’d be unbeatable.)

But despite her marvelous record, Clark is now being targeted in the primary by a far-left ex-Waltham city councilor named Jonathan Paz, or should I say “Paz!” because he uses the exclamation point on his logo. Probably a question mark would be more appropriate – Paz? – because he doesn’t have a chance.

Clark, as appalling as she is, in every way, just checks way too many Democrat boxes.

Still, Paz’ announcement video is amusing, watching him try to out-box-check Clark. In the first 37 seconds, he mentions “working class” twice. As we all understand, the more a hack Democrat mentions the working class, the less work he’s ever actually done.

But Paz’ big problem is, he was born in Boston. That is a major drawback now in local Democrat politics, almost an automatic disqualification.

The governor was born in Maryland, the senior senator in Oklahoma, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley in Chicago, the Senate president in New York City….

Paz understands his handicap, so he quickly points out that his immigrant parents soon moved back to Bolivia.

Does this make for his original sin of being born in Boston? I think not, but Paz’ biography continues with his parents (plural, another eyebrow-raiser in modern Democrat politics) moving back to the Great Satan.

He says they both worked – yet another no-no for modern Democrats, especially illegals. But wait – Paz’ father was then “detained and deported.” So maybe that makes Paz okay, even if he was born in Boston to an intact family.

To repeat, Paz is going nowhere, but both this and the Brownsberger-Lander fight show how Democrat politics are evolving both here and elsewhere. No locals need apply.

Consider the new Democrat mayor of New York, born in Africa, not even a US citizen until 2019.

Or the mayor of Providence, Brett Smiley. Guess where he was born. (Hint: same state as Michelle Wu and Ayanna Pressley). He’s married to a guy. How could he possibly lose? We’ve come a long way from Buddy Cianci.

Identity politics – that’s all the Democrat party cares about these days.

You can handicap their primary races just by the names. In San Francisco, the front-runner to succeed Nancy Pelosi was always expected to be state Sen. Scott Wiener, a flamboyant gay best known for introducing bills to reduce penalties for sex crimes, no matter how horrific.

Wiener would seem to be a natural fit for San Fran, right? But before Pelosi could officially retire, a new guy got into the race – someone named Saikat Chakrabati.

Wiener panicked and jumped into the race immediately. He understood the power of such an exotic name – they’ve been working in Democrat primaries since the days of Barry Soetoro, I mean Barack Hussein Obama.

In New York, there’s an old hack Democrat state comptroller named Thomas DiNapoli. A guy just moved to NY, from Kansas of all places, to run against him. The challenger’s name is Raj Goyle.

Who’d you put your money on in that primary next year? Raj or Tom?

Here in Massachusetts, there’s one male constitutional statewide officeholder left  – Secretary of State Bill Galvin. He had a primary opponent last time, a woman (from New Jersey) named Tanisha Sullivan. I still can’t believe she lost, not with a name like Tanisha.

One final thought: what if Mike Capuano had announced, back in 2018, that he was… bisexual? Would he still be in Congress? Could he have gotten away with it?

Probably not. He was from Somerville, the old Somerville that is. In the new Somerville, though, Capuano would have been returned to office, by acclamation.

(Order Howie’s new book, “Mass Corruption: Vol. 1, The Cops,” at amazon.com or howiecarrshow.com/store.)