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His ideas are very much needed in the party, especially the economic focused platform on middle America. Less identity politics, more attention to real issues:
by chillacy 8y ago
His ideas are very much needed in the party, especially the economic focused platform on middle America. Less identity politics, more attention to real issues: low labor participation rates even as GDP soars, rising suicide and opiate usage, a scarcity mentality eroding trust and optimism.
- beat 8y agoAll politics is identity politics. (And the politics of thinking that "identity" is for those people is privilege politics.) But that said, there's a distressing tendency for the "coastal elites" to sneer at the midwest working class, rather than recognize and sympathize with their struggles. Which is an identity problem in itself. Andrew Yang has his finger directly on the pulse of the malaise that led to Democrats losing PA, MI, OH, and WI. He counts the manufacturing job losses due to technology. But the GOP is offering someone to blame - immigrants, offshoring. It's hard to compete with someone who offers the customer a concrete enemy.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago>All politics is identity politics. Oh really? All politics is a matter of changing no policies or social structures at all, but instead pushing for "representation" of the voters' demographic groups among the tiny power elite? Or did you mean that all politics is a matter of antidiscrimination laws? Your statement is a deepity: it can either be interpreted as meaningfully narrow, but false, or as true, but so broad as to be meaningless.
- chillacy 8y agoI think our definitions of "identity politics" are not the same. Nonetheless I agree with everything else you said. My only hope is that his ideas enter the conversation of democrats or else we'll have a candidate focusing on costal city issues and ignoring the economic forces that matter in the states that have been neglected.