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Yes it seems the DNC didn't expect the 'Blue Wall' of the Mid-West to crumble. But (while I'm not generally on board with a lot of identity politics as seen on

by firasd 9y ago

Yes it seems the DNC didn't expect the 'Blue Wall' of the Mid-West to crumble. But (while I'm not generally on board with a lot of identity politics as seen on social media) I don't really understand comments saying that Dems need to focus less on minority issues to win back working-class whites. For example, a Democratic party chair from Ohio said of the national party, “While Trump is talking about trade and jobs, they’re still obsessing about which bathrooms people should be allowed to go into.”[1] But when it comes to things like the Muslim ban, transgender bathroom bills, etc. it seems like the GOP is trying to use identity as a wedge--the Dems and the left in general are just responding. It would probably be a mistake for Dems to give up on civil rights issues and just focus on economic issues. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/democrats-are-still-ignoring-the-people-who-could-have-helped-them-defeat-trump-ohio-party-leaders-say/2017/04/04/405295e0-0428-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/democrats-are-still-...

BrainInAJar 9y ago
The democrats don't need to abandon identity politics, but talking about poverty helps minorities and white poor people. As it stands though, the Democratic party won't touch economic issues. They've got a supermajority in California , have a bill passed by the state senate for single payer healthcare (SB562) and the (democrat controlled) assembly shelved it.
tajen 9y ago
> a mistake for Dems to give up on civil rights issues It's difficult to summarize why they've lost the election. But it's probable their focus on wrong civil right issues made them lose, when those rights were exaggerated. Some of those rights alienated voters the point that people preferred voting for a (let's be honest) stupid spoiled child than for the Dems. It's important to choose the correct civil right issues to fight for when you're running Dems, perhaps when fighting against "privileges" and 90% of the population ends up in one of the "privilege buckets", that may be a sign that the threshold for the notion of "privileges" goes way too far. Same goes for safe spaces, authorized speech (James Damore), overprotection of minorities, I wonder what would have come if the Dems left all this "privilege hate" aside and their program went just "Let's extend Obamacare and drop the TTIP". That would truely help minorities yet not be hate speech against the so-said "privileged".
weberc2 9y ago
You're right that there isn't any conflict between supporting civil rights and the working class, but identity politics is a perversion of social justice that treats everyone according to their external characteristics. In this case, working class whites have heard about how privileged they are to be white (while everyone's wages have risen around them) and how racist they are for opposing the illegal immigration that threatens their stability. And this is coming to them largely from upper and upper-middle class elites with no skin in the game, who largely make no attempt to understand their perspective. Mind you, the GOP and Trump aren't models of virtue. The message isn't "the Dems should be more like the Reps", it's "be compassionate and nuanced and stop abusing the innocent people you depend on".
- wpietri 9y ago
  Identity politics is not some weird Tumblr creation. America was founded by and for well-off white men. They were the only ones who could vote. America's history can be written as the slow removal of those limits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Removal_of_exclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St... What most white dudes critique as "identity politics" is people talking about and trying to remedy historical identity-based oppression. But they don't like these things being explicitly talked about, because sweeping the historical oppression under the rug is one of the mechanisms by which that oppression is maintained. If you really don't like identity politics, you too should work to help undo America's long history of pro-white, pro-male, pro-upper-class identity politics.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I don't think anyone disputes historical oppression (or at least those who do are outliers), I think the concern is that the identity devotees deliberately try to conflate real, historical oppression with things like women making different career choices than men. Their propensity to conclude oppression at any sign of a disparity (but only disparities that disadvantage one of "their groups"; e.g., wage gap is oppression but not workplace fatality gap) and constant mischaracterizations of opposing arguments ruins their credibility as advocates for real social justice. To put it bluntly, the "social justice left" appears to be more concerned with hating "white dudes" than it is with addressing actual social justice problems, and when a huge portion of your voting base is comprised of people you appear to hate or at least treat very badly, you should not expect to win an election.
unabridged 9y ago
>I don't really understand comments saying that Dems need to focus less on minority issues to win back working-class whites Its just about strategy, they can still fix the civil rights issues when they get to office. But they don't need to run on them, everyone interested in identity politics (sans the white nationalists) is already voting Dem. Campaigning on these issues doesn't win any new voters. They need to court all the centrists and right-wing people who aren't rich. Make the election about putting more money in everyday people's pockets. Run on "no taxes on your first $30k of income". Severely cut taxes on everyone below $100k, and start adding new brackets at $1m and every $500k above that.

by firasd 9y ago

BrainInAJar 9y ago

The democrats don't need to abandon identity politics, but talking about poverty helps minorities and white poor people. As it stands though, the Democratic party won't touch economic issues. They've got a supermajority in California , have a bill passed by the state senate for single payer healthcare (SB562) and the (democrat controlled) assembly shelved it.

tajen 9y ago

> a mistake for Dems to give up on civil rights issues It's difficult to summarize why they've lost the election. But it's probable their focus on wrong civil right issues made them lose, when those rights were exaggerated. Some of those rights alienated voters the point that people preferred voting for a (let's be honest) stupid spoiled child than for the Dems. It's important to choose the correct civil right issues to fight for when you're running Dems, perhaps when fighting against "privileges" and 90% of the population ends up in one of the "privilege buckets", that may be a sign that the threshold for the notion of "privileges" goes way too far. Same goes for safe spaces, authorized speech (James Damore), overprotection of minorities, I wonder what would have come if the Dems left all this "privilege hate" aside and their program went just "Let's extend Obamacare and drop the TTIP". That would truely help minorities yet not be hate speech against the so-said "privileged".

weberc2 9y ago

You're right that there isn't any conflict between supporting civil rights and the working class, but identity politics is a perversion of social justice that treats everyone according to their external characteristics. In this case, working class whites have heard about how privileged they are to be white (while everyone's wages have risen around them) and how racist they are for opposing the illegal immigration that threatens their stability. And this is coming to them largely from upper and upper-middle class elites with no skin in the game, who largely make no attempt to understand their perspective. Mind you, the GOP and Trump aren't models of virtue. The message isn't "the Dems should be more like the Reps", it's "be compassionate and nuanced and stop abusing the innocent people you depend on".

wpietri 9y ago
Identity politics is not some weird Tumblr creation. America was founded by and for well-off white men. They were the only ones who could vote. America's history can be written as the slow removal of those limits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Removal_of_exclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St... What most white dudes critique as "identity politics" is people talking about and trying to remedy historical identity-based oppression. But they don't like these things being explicitly talked about, because sweeping the historical oppression under the rug is one of the mechanisms by which that oppression is maintained. If you really don't like identity politics, you too should work to help undo America's long history of pro-white, pro-male, pro-upper-class identity politics.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I don't think anyone disputes historical oppression (or at least those who do are outliers), I think the concern is that the identity devotees deliberately try to conflate real, historical oppression with things like women making different career choices than men. Their propensity to conclude oppression at any sign of a disparity (but only disparities that disadvantage one of "their groups"; e.g., wage gap is oppression but not workplace fatality gap) and constant mischaracterizations of opposing arguments ruins their credibility as advocates for real social justice. To put it bluntly, the "social justice left" appears to be more concerned with hating "white dudes" than it is with addressing actual social justice problems, and when a huge portion of your voting base is comprised of people you appear to hate or at least treat very badly, you should not expect to win an election.

unabridged 9y ago

>I don't really understand comments saying that Dems need to focus less on minority issues to win back working-class whites Its just about strategy, they can still fix the civil rights issues when they get to office. But they don't need to run on them, everyone interested in identity politics (sans the white nationalists) is already voting Dem. Campaigning on these issues doesn't win any new voters. They need to court all the centrists and right-wing people who aren't rich. Make the election about putting more money in everyday people's pockets. Run on "no taxes on your first $30k of income". Severely cut taxes on everyone below $100k, and start adding new brackets at $1m and every $500k above that.