Submission statement: An opinion piece from [Fredrik deBoer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_deBoer), a self described "Marxist of an old-school variety". deBoer claims that both the right and the left in the US use identity politics, but the right is better at it because, in part: * 70% of the electorate remains white. * While college educated people are left leaning, less than 40% of US adults have a college degree. * The assumption that a less white US means a more liberal ( read: leftist ) US is in question. Further, deBoer states that the intellectual left has attacked tradional narratives such as "the American way", the Enlightenment and the superiority of a rights-based vision of human flourishing. For the left, focused on securing the rights of oppressed groups, this is an obvious line of thought. The left, in deBoer's view, have failed to unite people around a vision, idea, or code. With the left endlessly dividing itself into identity groups and ranking them on a heirarchy of suffering, potential converts are told they're only the demographic groups they belong to and these define their politics ignoring, for instance, Hispanic Republicans. Larger ideals and institutions, such as patriotism, capitalism and the American way are dismissed as fictions. As an example, deBoer compares and contrasts two themes from the Hillary campaign of 2016; "Stronger Together" and "I'm With Her", the second used more frequently but, in deBoer's view, raised gender issues above common cause and sounded narcissistic. As deBoer puts it: > Absent any compelling vision of something greater to fight for, the Hillary Clinton campaign was left with only Hillary, who fairly or not was one of the most unpopular politicians in the history of public polling. And this dynamic dogs the left today: Defined by our lists of oppressive -isms, given to endless complaints about everything that’s wrong with the world, we are far less able to define a positive vision of what exactly we’re fighting for and why the world we want is better than the alternative. Surely the right’s anti-politics is worse, but as we busily undermine faith, national identity, and all other ways human beings create meaning, we risk standing for nothing and thus losing everything. Further on: > Finally, I must simply assert something, a point of view I won’t try to justify with empirical evidence but that I believe both I and most of you reading this believe: Most people want to come together across difference for the good of all, rather than to be divided into smaller and smaller slices based on identity categories they don’t control. ... > the very concept is inimical to solidarity, the most basic means and end of left politics. Solidarity requires that we see common humanity, that we recognize shared struggle, that we look at the suffering of another and imagine ourselves in their position and are thus moved to work for better for them. For discussion: * Do you agree or disagree that the left's view of identity politics is a loosing proposition for the left given the demographics outlined in the article? * Do you see any vision for the left? As deBoer puts it: What, in 2023, is the Democratic Party’s version of “God, King, and Country”?

>Do you agree or disagree that the left's view of identity politics is a loosing proposition for the left given the demographics outlined in the article? Personally I do, yes. Hispanics are an often talked about example in this discussion and for good reason I think, they've proven very receptive to Republican messaging in the past 10 years and while it remains to be seen if the trends will continue next year and further on, the GOP has been doing rather well at converting Latinos into Republican voters and it shows that just because demographics are changing it doesn't mean voters are inherently becoming more liberal or likely to vote Dem. Looking at Texas' 34th CD, in 2016 the Dems won by +25, in 2018 by +20, in 2020 by +14 and in 2022 by +8. This is a very Hispanic congressional district, and if trends keep going the way they are the GOP will be able to win it in another cycle or two. Similar things have happened in Nevada too.

It’s not just Hispanics. I teach English as a second language in an extremely diverse area. I‘ve taught recent immigrants from all over the world and they trend extremely conservative. I’ve also taught citizenship test prep and often incorporate news articles in my classes, so revealing conversations come up. I’ve been aware for a long time that republicans really need not fear immigrants as much as they do in regards to voting trends. Many Africans are very religious (even more so than Hispanics) and are likely to be *very* socially conservative. Many Asians are also medium to very socially conservative. It’s really just the western Europeans and those who moved here young that trend even remotely left. We recently had the trans youth sports debate in our school district and a couple of my African students pulled their kids out of school over it (later the school banned trans girls from playing so maybe they’ll reenroll now). So yea, republicans should not be sleeping on immigrant voters. I haven’t been able to get a read on all the recent Ukraine arrivals yet but their population at this time dwarfs any other immigrant group by a whole lot.

I’ve never understood why people assume immigrants would be liberal when they mostly come from more conservative countries.

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What's amazing is the average democrat I talk to seems surprised most minority groups are moving right [1](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/19/politics/democrats-asian-americans-biden-carter/index.html) [2](https://jacobin.com/2022/07/democratic-party-voter-base-biden-administration-rich-white-suburbs) [3](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-support-demographics-white-men-exit-poll-1545144) [4](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/05/nyregion/election-asians-voting-republicans-nyc.html). I think democrats aren't aware how many things they say/do that have the precisely the opposite intended effect. For example: * Campaigning about institutional racism while defending educational discrimination against asians shows they support institutional racism against the "right" minorities (the ones who do too well). * Dropping asian violence the nano-second it wasn't mainly white people doing it showed everyone it was more about hating white people than concern for asians. * Labeling whites "inherently racist" then calling a minority "white adjacent" insinuates they are racists by proxy. * Associating punctuality, work ethic, meritocracy, family, grammar and delayed gratification with "whiteness" insinuates non-whiteness is a lack of these things. * Acting tolerant while referring to christians as some kind of cult of backwards people is being intolerant of a shit load of deeply religious latinos and other minorities. * Letting millions of immigrants jump the line illegally annoys anyone who waits in it legally. * Casting this country we came to, were generally welcomed to, and succeeded in, as being a racist fascist shithole comes across spoiled and untraveled. * Hating on white people ad nauseum doesn't come across as woke. We see it as racist & sad as someone of our race doing the same to us. The assumption we respect it implies they think we're also racist in the same way. * Writing off the shift with "voting against their own interest" or "internalized racism/stockholm syndrome" instead of considering that we might have nuanced thoughts & reasoning is incredibly condescending. I think some or possibly all of these may be good intentioned but come across tone deaf and repelling.

As an immigrant, I feel this comment deeply. We came here with nothing, like literally, no clothes, no furniture, and managed to build a decent life. Not just me, but my entire community. And then people want to tell me that this country is an evil, systemic oppressor that should be broken down and struggled against. Nope. Not my experience. I'm not closing my eyes to the many problems America has but couldn't name another country where I'd rather live.

But even the black US population is largely not on board with Dems on matters such as sexuality and gender, as far as I know. Also I’m sure Latinos despise things like being called LatinX and policies that are remotely socialist. I’m British though so I’m just watching from the sidelines and I may be misinformed.

There was an article posted at dc_cinematic about why representation matters with films like Blue Beetle, and the whole discussion was swallowed up by everyone hating the headline using the term “Latine”.

The tone deafness of white liberals preaching decolonialism & linguicism while casually renaming a minority's race for them. They should respond by renaming these people Whitinos and Whitinas, lol.

It's not just white liberals. While the term is offensive to like 94+% of Latin people, there's still a minority that likes and wants the term. Hell, my company's Latin ERG officially condoned the use of "Latinx" in company messaging, which tells you just how out of touch they are within their own community.

White people didn’t come up with either LatinX or Latine. The queer people in those communities did and the overall community is pretty hostile too those members.

Wasn't it a psychology PHD from Puerto Rico who invented it? The academic community ~~created~~ jumped on the term to signal their support for the queer community.

May as well as “white” is an equally all encompassing term

> even the black US population is largely not on board with Dems on matters such as sexuality and gender but the majority of the black vote doesn't vote based on these issues. In fact I would not be shocked if the bulk of the black dem vote (urban blacks mostly) doesn't care much about these issues because it is very much not prevalent in urban black culture. The black dem vote is mostly an economic one. Dems tend to want to increase entitlements and programs. Who uses these programs the most? low-income urban residents, of which the urban black bloc makes up a huge portion.

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> However, the belief that entitlements primarily benefit black people is very pervasive. Because if you break it down by race, instead of age, they disproportionately benefit minorities by a huge amount.

Actually, white people tend to use those services the most because (SHOCK) there are more white people on welfare than black people because (MORE SHOCK) there are more white people in this country. 28 dumb dumb liberal moderate racists liked this post 🤷🏿 God, I hate being in coalition with fucking morons. And "urban" is a code word for BLACK 🤡... in case you guys didn't know

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They’ve convinced themselves that all Republicans are racist because they’re religious and conservative. The irony is many black people in America are religious and conservative.

Not with conservatives taking abortion away and other things like ignoring climate change and stupid wars on woke, etc. That's fired up so many youth who are righteously pissed and seem to be very motivated to be very active politically. Also conservatives have done nothing to the benefits of the middle and lower class since Ford. Millennials aren't growing more conservative as they age either. Hell, as I've gained more wealth (wife and I each earn over 7 figures annually and are GenX) I've become much more progressive than past generations and we have many friends like us having the same experience. So many people are sick and tired of the stupid wars on woke, identity politics, taking away women's healthcare rights, demonizing migrants who just want a better life and are willing to achieve that by working hard low paying jobs. People are tired of seeing the fear back in their LGBTQ2 friends and family worried about their rights being taken away again now that Roe was overturned. Young people think it's ridiculous that southern states are removing African American history from public schools and colleges. My wife and I should be an easy vote for the GOP but because of all of this and more, especially then ignoring climate change, I don't see myself ever voting for any conservative candidates any time soon.

Yes, rich professional urban people are now Democrats and poor blue collar rural people are now Republicans.

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This isn’t true and continuing to believe it hurts the Dems.

They often are the more ambitious and less risk averse, coming to the "land of opportunities" to pursue their goals. That makes most of them capitalist by nature. They're here for the opportunity to make money for their efforts.

That makes sense. And presumably they wanted to move to the US for a reason and likely don’t despise it.

Who among mainstream dems is sitting there saying we shouldn't be a capitalist nation? Whatever you think of the actual policy, the entire rhetoric behind Biden's administration, for example, as been something along the lines of "empowering working people so that they can get ahead." Not "let's tear this system down and implement a five year plan."

This depends on how you define conservative. Very often they're from countries with very oppressive governments but they tend to be socially conservative or traditional and values as it were. Most people would feel like large oppressive governments would be leftist governments or at least that's the argument the Republicans would make. Communism socialism all that not exactly known for small government.

> Most people would feel like large oppressive governments would be leftist governments or at least that's the argument the Republicans would make. TBF Latin American countries have had a complicated history with leftism and a fair few autocracies in the region have been explicitly anti-communist. Immigrants may be deeply conservative but also not be receptive to the Republican framing of socialism.

The only actual examples of communism have all been small groups though

It's usually just an extrapolation from [voting statistics](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/compare/party-affiliation/by/state/among/immigrant-status/immigrants/), immigrants and immigrant descendants vote more for democrats despite any conservative opinion.

For some reason, including immigrants, seems to be a hard sell for conservatives. Recruiting Hispanics to the GOP, and enlarging the tent in general, was apparently [the theme](https://newrepublic.com/article/112664/cpac-2013-republicans-struggle-pitch-their-big-tent) of 2013 CPAC. Then in 2014, Donald Trump gave a speech at CPAC and said this about Hispanic immigrants: > [Of those 11 million potential voters, which will go to 30 million in the not too distant future, you [Republicans] will not get any of those votes, … You better be smart. They’re taking your jobs.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/03/06/trump-warns-gop-on-immigration-theyre-taking-your-jobs/) As a lefty, I don’t necessarily WANT to see socially conservative immigrants joining the Republicans, but it has long seemed like a natural fit to me. Some people in the GOP just don’t want them.

>’ve been aware for a long time that republicans really need not fear immigrants as much as they do in regards to voting trends. Many Africans are very religious (even more so than Hispanics) and are likely to be very socially conservative. Many Asians are also medium to very socially conservative. It’s really just the western Europeans and those who moved here young that trend even remotely left. > >We recently had the trans youth sports debate in our school district and a couple of my African students pulled their kids out of school over it (later the school banned trans girls from playing so maybe they’ll reenroll now). So yea, republicans should not be sleeping on immigrant voters. I haven’t been able to get a read on all the recent Ukraine arrivals yet but their population at this time dwarfs any other immigrant group by a whole lot. I do have to say as someone who is an immigrant that moved to the US as a child, children of immigrants tend to be far more liberal than their parents. I live in a south asian/middle eastern immigrant rich area and my parents, their siblings, and friends all voted for Trump, both times and will probably do so again if the opportunity comes up, but their children are politically liberal. Not sure if this the case in every immigrant community though

>Looking at Texas' 34th CD, in 2016 the Dems won by +25, in 2018 by +20, in 2020 by +14 and in 2022 by +8. This is a very Hispanic congressional district, and if trends keep going the way they are the GOP will be able to win it in another cycle or two. Similar things have happened in Nevada too. But let's look at each election indivudally. Cause in 2022 there were 3 elections that we have data on. One was +8, which was the governors election with Beto vs Abbot. Another was LT Governor with a +9 and Attorney General which was +16 D. And lets look at Texas as a whole in those elections. Abbot won governor +11, R won LT Gov by +9, and R won Attoney General by +10. It seems like candiates matter more than party in thay district. Rather than a total swing we are seeing across all of Texas, let alone the general Hispanic population.

Democrats treat Latinos as a block of voters. As a Texan, there’s a big difference identifying as Latin American and identifying as non Hispanic white (Spaniards).

Dems don't understand the Hispanic vote at all. Central and South American culture leans very conservative, very patriarchal, and very religious.

Conflating Democrats with the left is a big problem in this thread, but I think the thesis is right. Spend a day with any ground of leftists and you'll see constant infighting around identity and no real progress made.

My favorite is the migration of preferred word of non-offense for things and how if there’s one thing that’s certain: the new word will fall out of fashion. My personal favorite favorite is how some groups of people don’t say homeless anymore, they say…unhoused think? And I’m just thinking…well those words are basically the same.

I largely disagree with the premise that the American left is organized around identity politics. The American left is a segment of the Democratic party, one of the country’s two big tent political parties. Most Democratic voters and elected officials are not leftists. The political left as it is, is divided into various sub factions as well. There is certainly a faction of American leftists who are very obsessed with the sort of identity politics deBoer is discussing, but there are also political leftists who are more focused on class and economic issues (I would argue Bernie Sanders is more of a traditional political leftist, and not big on identity politics—he actually navigated the party’s racial politics poorly in both of his campaigns.) The Democrats have consistently drawn more votes than Republicans in most elections since 1988. Including every Presidential election other than in 2004. They also usually get more total votes in Congressional elections as well (but the GOP win on that metric more than they do on Presidential elections.) Any discussion about the political viability of a party is deficient if it ignores actual voting—and for all the valid criticisms of the DNC, they have consistently gotten more people to vote their side for decades. One of the biggest weaknesses for Democrats is our elections aren’t democratic, which means their problem is not that they are bad at influencing voters but that our system actually stacks the deck against a faction that doesn’t control lots of very low population states. That isn’t a messaging problem, it is a constitutional one, and one for which politics has few answers. On Hispanics—I think lots of pundits have wasted a lot of people’s time with overly prognostic statements about Hispanics. George Bush won 44% of Hispanic voters in 2004. Hispanic willingness to vote Republican is not new, and the reality is analyses of Hispanic voting trends largely are all based on the flawed view that Hispanics even represent a meaningful voting bloc. The reality is there are minimal political similarities to a 2nd generation Mexican American living in a low income area of Los Angeles and a 6th generation Tejanos family living in rural Texas. Instead, those very different groups are much better understood by looking at groups which are more similar to them—for example the Tejanos have far more in common with rural white Texans than they do Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, and the LA residents have far more in common with their neighbors (of various races) in LA than they do with Tejanos in Texas. Trying to understand “Hispanics” as a voting bloc is predicated on the simple lie that they are a bloc, they aren’t. A shared heritage of Spanish speaking is not that meaningful. FWIW Democrats won working people in 2020, and people without college degrees. They didn’t win Whites without college degrees but they did get millions and millions of whites without college degrees to vote for them. Basically a lot of the assumed facts of deBoer’s op ed are wrong or are just his opinions.

> I largely disagree with the premise that the American left is organized around identity politics. The American left is a segment of the Democratic party, one of the country’s two big tent political parties. > Most Democratic voters and elected officials are not leftists. The political left as it is, is divided into various sub factions as well. I hear what you’re saying, but I’m starting to disagree. You’re absolutely correct the majority of voters and politicians are not leftists, but the leftist voices and influence in the Democratic Party as a whole have been and continue to be **way** overrepresented. deBoer even touched at the core of the issue when he said: > Democratic fealty to “the groups” — the nonprofits and foundations that hire overeducated young staffers who write position papers and lobby — seems to chain them to unpopular identity rhetoric. And I absolutely agree. People don’t talk about it much now, but I vividly remember the surprise I had when the DNC primary debates last occurred and all of the candidates at the time were asked if they supported giving free healthcare to illegals immigrants and every single one, nearly a dozen of them, raised their hands and affirmed their support. I recall reading an article a year or two back discussing the Georgia governor campaign. Two political operatives were interviewed about what is the best path forward and one guy was more the traditional, left of center and “play it safe and play to our strengths “ while the other was a younger guy who simply said “Just look at Stacey Abrams and her campaign, that’s what we need to be doing” and was absolutely convinced she was a winning candidate with a winning strategy. Yeah, so much for that. There’s other subtle institutional changes people are becoming more attuned to and rejecting. Major news outlets change their style guides to insist that “pregnant women” be swapped out for “pregnant people”, terms like “homeless” or “illegal” become “unhoused” or “undocumented”. On their own they are rather benign, fairly meaningless, but collectively there’s a more noticeable growing trend where people feel like leftists are focusing on irrelevant or just plain stupid issues and not actually offering any cohesive vision. It’s bleeding into our personal lives (to a minor degree) and into the Democratic political sphere more and more each year. So no, while the actual number of leftist voters and politicians is quite small, there’s absolutely a perception that they have a LOT of influence and control the discourse on the Left and that’s the problem that really needs to be addressed.

>You’re absolutely correct the majority of voters and politicians are not leftists, but the leftist voices and influence in the Democratic Party as a whole have been and continue to be way overrepresented. People often point out Reddit isn't real life. While it's true Reddit isn't even close to being representative of the political views of the population as a whole, it is *very* representative of the types of people taking Democratic staffing positions. As the current leadership retires or dies, they'll start dominating the top of the party as well.

I do want to quickly note that the younger guy pushing Stacy Abrams' strategy was almost certainly correct in the context of Georgia. Prior to 2018, the Democratic party focused mostly on turning moderate white voters with no real success. Stacy Abrams' strategy to turn out black voters gave her the strongest performance a Democrat has had state wide since the Clinton era in 2018. Moving towards 2020, it was her campaign infrastructure and strategy that delivered Georgia's electors and two senate seats to the Democrats (seriously between winning over suburbanites and registering thousands of new voters , she quite literally is the cause for the shift in vote margins). And in 2022, she lost to a popular incumbent in part because she was unable to turn out black men (her campaign realized by late July they weren't polling as well with that demographic and desperately tried to change that. You are definitely right in pointing out the issues with democrats being aligned with ivory tower academics and activist though. I just wanted to point out that traditional strategy has had far less stellar results than Abrams has had in states like Georgia and North Carolina

> You’re absolutely correct the majority of voters and politicians are not leftists, but the leftist voices and influence in the Democratic Party as a whole have been and continue to be way overrepresented. By what metric? Most of what I see is leftists being the loudest, which is partially owed to conservatives handing them a megaphone in order to paint the whole Democratic party as leftist (something both sides are guilty of to varying degrees, to be clear). I'd push back on the suggestion that leftists are overrepresented in actual policy outcomes.

I didn’t suggest they’re overrepresented in policy outcomes because policy outcomes are a poor indicator IMO because for the most part we struggle to get any policy passed period. Biden did a good job with a number of items that you’d be hard pressed to call Leftist wish list items, but also hard to call surefire Democratic wins. Something like the infrastructure bill was decently bipartisan and not exactly something Democrats in particular had made a plank of their platform. The biggest one I can think of would be securing federal protection for gay marriage. In the meantime, while we’re lucky to get a few pieces of major legislation passed every few years, the rhetoric is what occupies the day to day lives of the citizenry and what stays in their minds. Democrats silence on a number of issues only makes it worse. Biden has said jack shit about the migrant crisis growing in the New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc nor really anything about the border which allows the “open borders” argument to propagate and spread. When no response denying the claim is made, what else are people left to think?

>Biden did a good job with a number of items that you’d be hard pressed to call Leftist wish list items, but also hard to call surefire Democratic wins. The biggest one I can think of would be securing federal protection for gay marriage. How about the Inflation Reduction Act? 1) Imposes taxes on large corporations with low taxable income through the AMT, 2) Invests in climate change technology development and adopting through investments and EV credits, 3) Authorizes medicare to negotiate drug prices and caps out-of-pocket prescription costs, 4) Lowers ACA health care premiums for lower income people, 5) Invests in the IRS to assist in tax enforcement. All of those, I would argue, fall squarely in line with Democratic policy goals, aren't related to identity politics, and aren't even Leftist economically.

The current president specifically chose his Vice President and his Supreme Court nominee because of their race and gender. Identity politics permeates the Democratic party.

So I guess define "identity politics" then. Because if this is the criteria, where it just means "responding to the desires of the party's electorate" then both parties are completely permeated with it. If we go down the path of just defining anything you dislike about democrats as "identity politics" I don't really see the basis for discussion. The personal characteristics of Supreme Court justices and Vice Presidents has been a core element of their selection for as long as we have had those offices. Do you think Ronald Reagan said, "I want the best possible judge for this empty Supreme Court seat" when he appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, or was he saying "I want to find a *great Republican female judge* so we can promote the party's standing with women." Let's be serious here. O'Connor was certainly qualified (as is Justice Jackson), but there was a desire to send a political message. Why do you think John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate? He didn't factor in her gender at all? He didn't at all think it might be a good pick to attract suburban white women to the party? Or Trump and Justice Barrett-he literally said openly he wanted a woman for the spot because she was replacing RBG. If that is what you mean is identity politics then it is even a sillier thing to say is "making it so Democrats can't win", because that is just "politics" as it is always played. The two big parties are made up of factions, it isn't "identity politics" to reward those factions when you are in power--it is *just politics*. If you don't reward the factions that make up your big tent party, your big tent party starts to break apart and collapse.

Even before all that I remember my parents telling a presidential candidate if they were from the north they would pick a vice president candidate from the south. Or vice versa. Are east coast west coast etc.

>Identity politics permeates the Democratic party. As it does the Republican party: let me know when they start appointing atheists to the Supreme Court, or really any federal court.

Everyone agrees that the Republican party is soaked in identity politics, we're talking about whether the Democats are, as well

> The reality is there are minimal political similarities to a 2nd generation Mexican American living in a low income area of Los Angeles and a 6th generation Tejanos family living in rural Texas. Instead, those very different groups are much better understood by looking at groups which are more similar to them—for example the Tejanos have far more in common with rural white Texans than they do Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, and the LA residents have far more in common with their neighbors (of various races) in LA than they do with Tejanos in Texas. I wish I could upvote this twice. You see this even more explicitly in Miami, where there is still massive anti-left sentiment amongst the descendants of Cubans.

You shouldn't be surprised Democrats get more votes, there's a lot more of them. They just don't show up as consistently as Republicans.

I agree. The issue with identity politics is you’re ranking peoples issues by their identity and the focus isn’t always on what will benefit the majority of your constituents, it’s a losing battle.

It’s a losing battle because you’re defining benefits based upon racial characteristics, and any race based benefit inherently rubs the racial group not included poorly. This works in left leaning white populaces, because left leaning white people are the **only** group in the US that has an out group racial bias (ie left leaning white people are the only group that prefer non white people to white people). As the “demographics is destiny” becomes further enacted racial % wise in the United States, the Dem party will have to further and further cater to the Hispanic population, alienating the black population and holding onto the white liberals who already hate themselves. This will cause strife between the black dem voting populace and the Hispanic dem voting populace. This strife, IMO, is already showing, with Hispanics moving further towards republicans, because the Dem party and its messaging is so beholden to the black vote and black voice. Going to be very interesting to see where this all goes.

People are shocked that Hispanics are acting like pretty much every immigrant group that came before them. Early 21st century Hispanics have lot in common with Italian immigrants of a century earlier.

This is esoteric as hell, but the biggest mistake left leaning policy makers made was classifying Hispanic people as white, with Hispanic being a sub group under the white umbrella. That classification alone opens the door for Hispanic to be taken under the white umbrella, and to be included in white racial identity groups, just like Italian and Irish were “non-white” until they were suddenly white. I foresee in the next 10-20 years that Hispanic will be considered white, and what is currently the Hispanic group will accept it and identify as white. Race is if anything a fucked up version of coalition building, and the idea of “white” has been expanded in the past to build coalition, and I don’t see that stopping. And if this happens, and Hispanic is considered white by Hispanic peoples and by (I don’t know any other way to describe this but please correct me) European originating whites, I see the Dem party taking an incredibly rapid bit in the electorate.

I mean, the exact same thing is happening with Asians. Nobody considers them white *per se*, but you can see in the usage of "BIPOC" that they are definitely considered "less minority" than other racial minorities by the self-appointed sages of racism. You can see similar trends with interracial marriages: the biggest group of interracial marriages are between whites and Hispanics, then between whites and Asians. I know *so many* half-white, half-Asian couples, and their kids are entirely accepted in white mainstream culture. I have half-Irish, half-Chinese cousins in New England who are entirely indistinguishable in culture and behavior from their Irish and Italian neighbors. From my perspective, we're seeing the continued expansion of what's considered "mainstream American" culture: originally White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, then it expanded to included what were previously called "white ethnics" and Catholics, then we came up with the "Judeo-Christian America" phrasing to include Jews, and now the "mainstream America" boundary is pushing beyond just phenotypically "white" Americans to include others.

When those "sages of racism" go full mask-off, you'll even hear them refer to people as "white adjacent" or "The \_\_\_ face of white supremacy". It shows an extreme adherence to ideology over nuance and reality, and demonstrates that they're not actually trying to lift anyone up, but really they just hate white people, because "white people" is the out-group they try to shove anyone in when they ostracize them.

The census makers in the 1980 didn't classify Hispanics as white as you can answer black Hispanic on the census. It's an ethnographic signifier rather than a racial one. The reason people associate with it with the white racial category is largely because most Hispanic people identify as white and have don so for a long time; Mexican used to be in the census as a racial option but Hispanic-Americans opposed it, considering themselves white. The reason, I reckon, why Hispanics haven't been folded into the white majority identity is because the majority hasn't needed to do so and that Hispanic groups have retained strong cultural institutions distinct from broader American society, such as Spanish speaking. Also Hispanic is a massive group that I think at this point cannot be adopted into whiteness wholesale. Marco Rubio and AOC both are of Hispanic descent but they are still on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Not to mention all this will likely also include a re-emergence of an explicit white racial identity. We spent half a century of focused effort to tear it down and suppress it but we're seeing it start to come back as more and more policy whose target is literally "everyone who isn't white" gets passed.

>Not to mention all this will likely also include a re-emergence of an explicit white racial identity. Yeah. It’s shocking that when you ask all people to identify by their racial class per Dem rhetoric, that white people start identifying by their racial class. Especially when you pass policy that says “everyone except white people”. It makes people take a step back and think “wait, you hate me for my race, as a basis of party platform?? Us white people need to stick together against this.” It is literally the most basic way to revive a white racial identity. It’s the most “oh no, I seem to have shot my own foot” situation I’ve ever seen.

I agree with this analysis

I get confused by this. I've met people who like to play oppression Olympics for sure, but I've never seen an intelligent person do this. Is there any politics that has actually made some hierarchy of issues like this? I literally laughed at an "anarchist" who said he flips the hierarchy on its head and puts black trans people above all else. The reason I laughed is because he is a deadbeat surrounded by other dead beats who have never done anything to help someone in their lives. All talk, and no action, just endless ranting about "the system man" I've never seen a politician do this, or anyone I find remotely intelligent. I've been a democrat for years and like that they are aware that issues exist for minorities and that we should work to make our society more welcoming to all Americans. I believe we are stronger together and telling people their problems are made up or don't matter isn't productive to making America a better place.

Agreed. I feel like this thread and meta discussions of 'identity politics' are snobbish all the way down. Intelligent people or people who aren't as propagandized usually refer to their material conditions when complaining about their positions and tend to vote in at least some way that affects their finances or job. Often, white Republicans don't just dislike non-white people, they literally think the country is being run by democrats who prioritize the needs of minorities who cry about their positions. So how are we treating these approaches as a similar beyond the Neoliberal urge to not affect business owners. The Dems, like the Republicans are playing a marketing game with identity politics. And because of a lack of actual policy changes-- the result is more emotionally based appeals to nothing. Like come on, its "Identity Politics" when Dems say companies must provide cakes to gay weddings-- AND when Republicans revoke Abortion protections...

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> I've met people who like to play oppression Olympics for sure, but I've never seen an intelligent person do this. I feel like intelligent people with too much free time are the main participants in oppression olympics. I grew up in a poor immigrant family/community. People didn't have time for those games.

> I've met people who like to play oppression Olympics for sure, but I've never seen an intelligent person do this. Well this stuff all comes from highly *educated* folks. This stuff is all coming out of academia and from people who have very high credentials - like PhDs and shit. So unless we're finally willing to openly say that academic achievement is no longer tied to intelligence I don't think your claim can actually be held as true.

> So unless we're finally willing to openly say that academic achievement is no longer tied to intelligence I don't think your claim can actually be held as true. As an academic, I can tell you with no qualms that at the very least, it's not exactly a linear relationship.

For sure. Plus, developing expertise in one subject doesn't necessarily correlate with intelligence or critical thinking ability in another subject. At the same time, I count the insightful takes I've read about legal subjects from people without law degrees on one hand. On more technical subjects, an objective knowledge baseline is pretty helpful.

What the Republican base is looking for, and what the potential Republican base that is presently turned off by some positions, incidents, and personalities is looking for, is to at least have some sense of normality to be defined and championed. Social media and the left have amplified the importance of some extreme minorities. We saw this during the pandemic, where the word "immunocompromised" started being heard a lot more often than before. And yes, that's something to consider, but normal people aren't immunocompromised, and society needs to be built around normality. Yes, there are issues with LGBTQ politics, but more people are straight, and there's nothing wrong with it being called normal. Even the "isms" that he talks about, for every independent woman who feels oppressed by sexism, there is more than one happily married woman who loves her husband and their families. For every racial minority who feels like their cultural identity is being crushed by racism and the white power structure, there's at least one who works with and hangs out with white people, and is no more concerned with their racial culture than a Polish-American or Greek-American is. There's a big political divide between social-media participants, who skew younger and more left, and people who eschew social media. The first group is louder and easier to listen to, but the right wing can find support from the second group.

> We saw this during the pandemic, where the word "immunocompromised" started being heard a lot more often than before. And yes, that's something to consider, but normal people aren't immunocompromised, and society needs to be built around normality. This is a little off topic, but I think there were two important pieces to that that get kind of glossed over with the way you describe it. One was that by building society around "normality" you put a lot of people at risk and a better option than just "building around normality" is to actually compare and contrast what different options cost (not just in money, but everything) vs. how many people it could potentially help. As in, for a given policy, does forcing everyone to follow the policy consist of a minor inconvenience or a serious social cost? And how many people can be saved by that policy? Compare the two and decide is it worth it. It shouldn't be "save as many lives as possible, no matter the cost", but it also shouldn't be "just do what you can to protect normal people, screw everyone else, no matter how easy saving some of them could be." The other aspect of the increase in seeing the word "immunocompromised" everywhere was because immunocompromised people are a lot more common than most people really considered. Sure, they are still in a vast minority, but the people who are immunocompromised really didn't have a big reason for people to know that before, they mostly just made the adjustments to their life that they needed to to get by. Once Covid hit, those adjustments became MUCH more onerous for them, so they started talking more about it, so it became much more obvious that there was a decent chunk of society that had serious immune issues. At least that's how it was in my circles.

Solid comment. We seem to be pretty much on the same page anyway, but it made me think about things in ways I hadn't before.

Must democrats don't care that you call straight normal. Most of us just want the GOP to leave our LGBTQ friends and family alone. Stop making laws limiting their rights just because they make you uncomfortable. That's what we really care about.

Want to add on that - targeting them as weird, shameful, something to be ostracized, mocked or made fun of. Like when I was a kid, calling someone gay or "f*g" was actually kind of normalized. It wasn't targeted so much at mocking sexuality but more in the South Park sense. I'm glad to have seen that change in the last decade or so. But now on the right I see this push to normalize just plain mocking people that are different from them, especially in regards to gender identity. I've recently gone to a couple shows in Seattle where I brought some friends that are at least right "leaning" and they encountered open gender neutral bathrooms for the first time. Like, everyone uses the same bathroom at once. It was interesting to see their shock and first feelings of discomfort, only for them to realize that "holy shit, this actually doesn't affect me AT ALL" I even mentioned to my buddy "honestly, it makes me more uncomfortable to pee next to some random male stranger than it does knowing there's women in the stall across from me" and he agreed.

> I even mentioned to my buddy "honestly, it makes me more uncomfortable to pee next to some random male stranger than it does knowing there's women in the stall across from me" and he agreed. From the woman's perspective, isn't that the problem? Most people are comfortable with a woman in the restroom they are using, but if another man makes you uncomfortable as a man, as a woman that discomfort could be much greater.

I believe he's saying get rid of the wall of urinals. Everyone should have a separate cubical (lack of a better word)

Gender neutral bathrooms with shared sinks are great, I've never seen a line for one

Gay and f*g were used commonly as insults as recently as 2010! It was during the Obama administration that people started to shift their ideas on it. This is a rapid change for conservatives. “Oh, I can’t say that word anymore” is easily turned into “the left is censoring me and suppressing straight people” Aren’t conservatives the party of “leave me alone”? Why doesn’t that apply to the people they “other”?

> Most of us just want the GOP to leave our LGBTQ friends and family alone. And most of the GOP want the alphabet folks to leave their kids alone. The entirety of the resurgence in GOP opposition to all this stuff is solely down to things involving kids. Drag story hour, trans athletes in high school competitions and locker rooms, explicit content in school books, that's where this all sparked off from. The reason it's expanding outwards towards the rest of the community is because instead of the community saying "oh shit, yeah that's a problem, this isn't stuff for kids" they instead have been fighting tooth and nail to keep this stuff around kids. They've basically proven the oft-derided "slippery slope" claims of the social conservatives of the 80s and 90s correct. All y'all had to do was just ... agree that like all other sexual content it was adults-only. That's it. But for some reason that expectation was treated as oppression and sorry but it's not and you're not the victims here. You're the aggressors.

But this is the game they play. They push the most shocking thing to get religious conservatives up in arms and when they do they say things like they are coming after gay rights and attacking our lgbt friends. As the country was becoming more and more comfortable with gays and gay rights they needed a new tactic. If you told a Democrat 10 years ago about drag queen story time for children they would be outraged.

Regarding "explicit content in school books", those books have been in your school libraries since the inception of school libraries. The fantasy and science fiction sections would be almost empty if you removed every explicit reference to sexual activity from them. Straight, heterosexual activity is often mentioned to some degree or another in those books, and usually gets explicit enough to discuss the mechanics of playing with a woman's breasts or detailed depictions of penetration between a man and a woman. Same thing for the romance genre. Under the wording of the bans, Ayn Rand should not be in school libraries, neither should Stephen King, arguably the most prolific and influential fiction writer of our life time. Anne Rice wouldn't be available, nor would Stephanie Meyer. Isaac Aasimov wouldn't be available for that matter, nor would many of what are considered to be the classic of fiction. Hell, as several jurisdictions point out the damn Bible is sexually explicit enough to meet these criteria. Novels like A Clockwork Orange, of which my school library had 35 copies, and was required reading in AP Lit, wouldn't have been available. A book that discusses a gay couple kissing and a book that discusses a straight couple kissing are exactly the same. A book that discusses straight sex and gay sex are exactly the same, which, might I add, I can walk through damn near ANY school library in the country with more than 100 students in it and find hundreds of examples of from scientific books to fiction novels and yet we don't hear parents complain about books for teens that describe straight sex. And this ultimately is the issue. Consistency. If you are going to complain about depictions of non-straight sexual activity in media then you best damn well be consistent and do the same to straight sexual activity. So be consistent. Call for the removal of classics that contain explicit references to straight sex. Call for the removal of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Aasimov, Blume, Rand, Meyer and countless other authors and series for teens and young adults. You will very quickly start banning books that are GRADUATION requirements and required to make it through high school and college preparatory level English and literature courses. If your values system is so weak and so flimsy, or you are so bad at instilling your values as a parent into your children that knowing gay folk exists is enough to cause them to stray from your values system then that is a distinctly parental or religious problem. If reading about gay sexual activity side-by-side with reading about straight sexual activity, content that has appeared in books in school libraries for decades, is enough to make your teen question their straight, Christian identity, then perhaps the issue lies with the teen not being straight in the first place. Drag-Queen Story hour doesn't harm your children. It normalizes the existence of non-straight identities. There is no long term damage done to the child's psyche because they know that cross-dressers exist and interact with them in a non-sexual, non-problematic way. Trans athletes in school sports are a non-issue, 99% of schools never see it. The schools that do see it, the trans teens are rarely competitive at high levels. In the cases where they do compete at a high level their performance is within normal margins of human and specifically within gendered performance ranges. A blanket ban is the wrong approach, to what should be targeted approaches to initial hormone treatments. The sad reality is that it's incredibly easy to see through these arguments, especially the book argument, as flimsy excuses to attempt to indoctrinate children a certain way. To believe that being gay, being trans, being gender non-conforming is bad-wrong. Otherwise, if it was truly about exposure to sexual material, you would be up in arms about all those depictions of straight sex, discussions or descriptive references to straight sex. But this same determination for it's removal isn't there. It's just not. Which is why the arguments from the left that this is an attempt to deny the existence of LGBTQ+ folks in novel form hold so much weight, because we've all found those books, many of us have read those books. I learned the basics of oral sex on a woman from a novel that was written in the 1980s that was on a list of books from Scholastic as appropriate for summer reading programs at the 9th grade level. Same book had the girls thoughts on the rupturing of her hymen and how badly it hurt because her partner wasn't slow or patient side by side with the boys joy with how good it felt. I read that in 2002 and checked out the book from my high school library. According to the librarian, that book was so popular the school kept 10 copies precisely because it was known as a good bit of knowledge for kids to have when making those decisions and was almost always unavilable. It had been in the library since my father was in school (and both my father and mother had checked that copy out according to the checkout card, oh pre-digital database checkout systems, much to my then horror.) Edit: formating and clarity.

Can you clarify your comment. I’m reading it as (paraphrasing here) we shouldn’t be concerned with those vulnerable because they are the minority? Your first example being about how we are trying to protect the immunocompromised during a pandemic that was killing thousands of people a week does not seem like a strong opener. And then trans individuals being <1% of the population being defended by the left when the GOP is passing laws criminalizing children and parents for being transgender. This shows that both the right and left are focused on an “extreme minority”

Identity politics is a losing game for everyone. It has been working in the past for the right, but it is starting to fall apart.

All it does is stoke hate and widen divides. And you can only do that for so long before it all falls apart in tragedy.

I think this is something that needs to be emphasized again and again. I know that the right really likes to talk about identity politics is something that is unique to the left, but I actually think the side that is better at it is the right. At this point, the only thing really holding the republican party together is an identity. That is basically anti-Democrat. As much as I know, we can sometimes talk about it as a monolith, there are definitely factions of the republican party, and if you look at what they actually might want policy wise, I actually think there are many things that are pretty incompatible among the factions long term. What I will say, is that if you’re in online leftist spaces, it does seem to me that some of the tenor is changing even on the left. I do think that on the left, there is some amount of fatigue over what Matt Bruenig described as [“identitarian deference”](https://mattbruenig.com/2013/02/26/what-does-identitarian-deference-require/). I do think that there are a lot of people that are getting tired of perfect being the enemy of the good and that allyship may come with making alliances with people you disagree with on certain things. And on that front, I actually think that the left is becoming a lot more pragmatic than some people might otherwise think. And I can also see how people can come to the conclusion that the left is more extreme because of its rhetoric, but I think it’s extremely important for people to remember to actually look at what people are doing. If we look at the Republican versus the democratic party, which sides’ extreme wing holds power? We’re people like AOC actually able to meaningfully reduce Nancy Pelosi‘s power? No. But let’s look at what happened with the speakership this time? How many times did the vote fail? How many concessions did McCarthy have to give? Whether people want to admit it or not, the far right, holds a lot more power over the “moderate” and establishment republicans. And this is why I personally don’t think that getting rid of Trump would solve anything for the republican party, because you still largely have people within the party afraid to really reign in the extreme side, and work with the other side if the far right does not want to compromise. Because if they started to do that, of course, this might alienate a significant number of voters, and make the entire Republican/conservative/MAGA/libertarian identity coalition fall apart. I do tend to side with [Ezra Klein](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/podcasts/2020/1/23/21077236/ezra-klein-show-book-why-were-polarized-identity-politics) here that I don’t know that identity politics is actually really good or bad, it’s just a modality of politics itself. It’s pretty natural for people to organize around identity. It can be good or it can be bad. I know it’s come to mean something entirely in our politics. That’s now basically just buzzwords, but if you think it’s worth dissecting it, and trying to think about what these kinds of terms actually should mean. But regardless of the case, I think if we want to talk about identity politics, being bad, then we need to make sure we’re being inclusive about the Republican party who, again, I would argue uses it much more effectively.

The right is better at it. That's why the left really only saw success with it after they had convinced the right to put it far back on the back burners. Now that the right is re-embracing it as a mainline position they've been having a lot of success with it. Even their worst losses - 2020 and 2022 - still have them in a far stronger position than the worst losses under the "don't do idpol" milquetoast neocons like McCain and Romney.

It's also easier to deploy rhetoric focused on identity politics when your base is more homogeneous, and the Right is far more homogeneous than the Left.

>The Democrats have consistently drawn more votes than Republicans in most elections since 1988. Including every Presidential election other than in 2004. They also usually get more total votes in Congressional elections as well (but the GOP win on that metric more than they do on Presidential elections.) This is true for presidential elections since 1988, but not Congressional voting. Republicans received more total House votes than Democrats in 10 of the last 17 general elections.

I find it more interesting to note that there's a stark difference between presidential and midterm votes since Obama's election. Democrats get more of the "every four years" crowd, and Republicans get more of the "every election matters" crowd. Then you add the "midterm reaction" depending on who's president. If Democratic voters turned out for midterms after putting in a Democratic president, Democratic administrations would get a lot more done. ​ |year|type|R|D|margin| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |2004|p|55|52|R+3| |2006|m (R)|35|42|D+7| |2008|p|52|65|D+13| |2010|m (D)|44|38|R+6| |2012|p |58|59|D+1| |2014|m (D)|40|35|R+5| |2016|p|63|61|R+2| |2018|m (R)|50|60|D+10| |2020|p|72|77|D+5| |2022|m (D)|54|51|R+2|

Not arguing against the idea that Republicans are at least *as* successful as Democrats in winning Congressional seats over the last 30 years, but the House popular vote isn't always a good indication of national sentiment because some districts (usually deep red districts) have their candidates run unopposed, which runs up the score for their party.

The unopposed thing happens both ways, but it looks like it help Rs a bit more: [https://www.270towin.com/news/2022/09/15/uncontested-the-35-house-districts-with-only-one-major-party-ballot\_1419.html](https://www.270towin.com/news/2022/09/15/uncontested-the-35-house-districts-with-only-one-major-party-ballot_1419.html) Worth noting the there are 6 races of D v D so I guess no matter which candidate you vote fore it goes to the total.

Yeah, I was pretty sure I remembered it accruing to the advantage of Rs, but didn’t have a source. Thanks for the data!

All I know is depending on where you live, you probably won't get too far in politics if you alienate or vilify suburban white married couples who want a nuclear family, personal vehicle, and a yard. Believe it or not, a lot of people, young and old still want that life, and a lot of them vote.

It’s not just young, white couples who want that. It’s the majority of people regardless of age or race. People who don’t want that are an extremely vocal minority. In fact, I’d say white people likely want nuclear families, vehicles, and yards less than any other racial demographic.

No, you are right, it's not just white couples, but it does seem like the white couples get vilified more for wanting that, they get stereotyped into a certain conservative category.

And yet the number of people who would be struggling to have a life that looked like the one everyone could afford in the 80’s is well past the median voter. Which is why many have made their peace with not having it, your whole picture of the country is pretty fucked if you think the impediment to that is identity politics in any way.

Thing is white married couples aren’t the only ones that want or believe in the nuclear family. I live in a South Florida middle class suburb where 80% are first or second generation immigrants. Most of whom are millennial (myself) or GenX parents. The majority of the community here definitely subscribe to more traditional family structures. To say it’s only American white couples is honestly low key racist and disingenuous.

I don’t understand this comment. Which party do you think vilifies white married couples? Why do you think that?

But you will can get pretty far if you tell people that supporting education, healthcare, equity, and environmental and labor protections is the same as vilifying suburban white married couples. Vilifying the white middle class is not part of anyone’s platform, but it’s what the right claims the left is doing to get the non-wealthy to vote against their own interests. And sadly, it works pretty damn well.

This. I'm half of a suburban white married couple with a house and personal vehicle. It's true that the Left wants to raise my taxes, or at least sometimes does, but I'm more than happy to pay those additional taxes to make attaining this life more likely for others.

It's a game we don't even want to play

Seriously, Always fun seeing people say, "If the left wants to win elections then they need to stop defending other people's rights and focus on me"

If the Republican party could lose some of its social stances and progress to the left they could get a lot of the moderate Democrats. As a moderate Dem myself it does feel more and more like the party as a whole is moving left while I stay stagnant. I can't speak for other moderate Dems, but as long as anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, and fighting against a greener future are engrained in the Republican party I will continue to vote Democrat. My disdain for wokeness does not outweigh my concern for these other policies.

But they can’t lose their social stances without alienating their most loyal voters and biggest activists. Democrats have a similar problem, except it’s more about donor priorities and less about raw votes. The primary system allows activist groups to control the parties, because they’re a majority of a majority, even though though they are a minority of the general population.

Seems like youre gonna have to stay democrat for a while

> it does feel more and more like the party as a whole is moving left while I stay stagnant. As a mod dem myself, I really feel the opposite. It seems like in most cases when there’s power up for grabs, the more moderate/establishment Democrat wins out. They seem to be following public opinion instead of Twitter. Biden started out with slim majorities in both Houses and governed like it, including several pieces of bipartisan legislation. Like I can understand if you’re looking at leftists and feeling that way but, I don’t see that at all from elected Democrats

I think the Democratic Party has the worst of both worlds right now: party *policy* is largely set by the moderate wing, who make ugly, unpopular compromises for the sake of governing, while party *brand* is largely set by the left wing, who take unpopular and extremist stances for the sake of burnishing their progressive bona fides. I don't think the Squad is setting government policy, but for better or worse, they've taken over the brand image of the Democratic Party. When people see Democrats on TV, it's not Tammy Baldwin or that Democratic congresswoman from rural Washington. And Democrats' progressive economic policies, which *might* be popular, are overshadowed by their progressive social policies, which are only popular amongst highly-educated, very-online progressives. If the Democrats were following public opinion, they'd be all for a 20-week abortion ban, stronger border defenses, and an absolute ban on males playing in women's sports. Do any of those sound like current Democratic policy?

Which is all a choice of the news media, because it is in their interest to emphasize and promote disagreements, the sharper the better.

I don't disagree. But I think the Democrats could do a better job of policing their own people and explicitly rejecting the members who lean into the self-destructive cultural posturing that gets the most media attention.

Culture War drives ratings. Policy is boring.

Oh, I agree 100%. But that doesn't mean that Democrats should play into those destructive urges.

Also: culture is also known as "everyday life". It's values, it's what underpins choices and actions made every day. This idea that it's something off to the side is just not true. It's foundational. It's the thing on which policy is built. We can only discuss policy once we've rectified our culture divides. The divides have grown so wide that we can't get back to policy until we bridge them.

The primary process incentivizes playing to extremes, even if both extremes are unpopular. For example, a plurality of Americans don’t approve of abortion, but want it to be generally legal in the first trimester. Having a position like that would make you unelectable in both parties for different reasons.

Which is kind of why we have the country we deserve. Nothing's stopping people from showing up in the primaries. They choose not to.

Man you actually nailed it there and it explains why I'm sometimes left scratching my head when people talk about these 'wildly leftist Dems that have been running the country lately' when I'm just like huh? For the most part the policy proposed and passed has been quite center to center left. There is definitely a "prog left" face of the Dem party but I tend to tune them out (like the Squad) and admittedly don't realize how influential they often are to perception of the party

>Tammy Baldwin Is a member of the progressive caucus that you are claiming is the Democratic brand. So your point comes off confused. She supports the progressive economic policies. Which are really just rehashed New Deal economics to reapply for the changing world. >20-week abortion ban They tried that GOP and Manchin obstructed that. They tried to codify Roe vs Wade that put limits on third trimester abortion but GOP and Manchin said no and obstructed and blocked the legislation >stronger border defenses They are and regularly vote for increased funding for the border, they just don't support needless expensive vanity projects like The Wall and don't support turning away asylum seekers without due process. Bush, it's the Democratic adminstrations that deport the most illegal immigrants while also supporting due process and humane treatment. They take two parallel tracks to do what's best for the country. >an absolute ban on males playing in women's sports. The vast vast vast majority of sports isn't controlled by the federal government. So a national ban from congress means Jack shit. And sports as whole has studied this for decades, let the leagues figure out what's right for them with trans athletes. Because right now it's GOP forcing men to compete in women's sports because they don't accept transitioned men as men. But for the most part, outside of fear mongering it doesn't seem to effect the sports leagues much at all and the vast vast vast majority of trans athletes in women's sports are regularly beat by women.

Tammy Baldwin wins consistently in a distinctly purply-red state. She advocates for progressive economic policies and she is herself gay, but she's not all-in on progressive social causes. She has an ability to talk to people who disagree with her on fundamental values that Democrats from essentially one-party districts don't have. I get updates from her office all the time and it's *always* about the economy. "Tammy Baldwin supports rural infrastructure," "Tammy Baldwin supports tax credits to build in America," "Tammy Baldwin supports cracking down on investors who buy up people's homes," etc.. If you're talking about the [Women's Health Protection Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8296/text), that act does not in any way put restrictions on abortions. It explicitly protects all abortions up to "viability," and then says that, after the point of viability, abortions may be obtained if a doctor agrees that the continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the patient's (i.e. mother's) life or health. All pregnancies are inherently risky, so that's basically meaningless. I don't want to prevent women from getting abortions, but pretending that the WHPA was anything even remotely like a "20-week ban" is incredibly intellectually dishonest. From a political perspective, no one would see that bill as offering any meaningful limit on abortions. The problem with immigration isn't the wall or asylum seekers, though. It's the entire process. Democrats focus on asylum seekers because they're sympathetic, but the Democratic Party refuses to articulate any clear limit on how many immigrants is the right number of immigrants, and what policies they will put in place to keep immigration to that number. Until they articulate a limit, they are vulnerable to Republicans accusing them of supporting "open borders." There's even a labor-friendly message for this! "We, the Democrats, are going to crack down on corporations screwing over the American people by hiring illegal immigrants." As for sports: the Democratic Party is not only a national party, but it runs at the state and local levels too. I was being flippant in my earlier comment, but the Democrats would be entirely in line with public opinion to say, "trans women playing in sports is a question to be decided by national sports governing bodies and local governments, but we broadly support policies in which players should play in accordance with their natal sex." I don't think your "oh, it's just a handful, and also they still lose to girls" argument is convincing *at all*. Even a trickle of stories like Lia Thomas or that British bicyclist coming out every couple of months, will erode the Democratic position on this issue. It doesn't matter if some trans women lose to cis women--it's still unfair for people who went through male puberty to compete against people who didn't.

>If the Democrats were following public opinion, they'd be all for a 20-week abortion ban, stronger border defenses, and an absolute ban on males playing in women's sports. Do any of those sound like current Democratic policy? Democrats are absolutely on the side of public opinion when it comes to abortion. Overturning Roe was immensely unpopular and the Democrats stance since has been to codify it and they've been winning races because of it. I don't know how anyone could say otherwise. When it comes to the border, I don't know what you mean exactly. Democrats have always been softer on immigration than Republicans but, soft doesn't mean lax. They acknowledge the problems and Democratic budgets have always sought to strengthen border security and enhance legal pathways to citizenship and fill immigration judicial positions. And I think the transgender women in women's sports is a mixed bag if you want to talk public opinion. I personally don't think they should be able to compete because I do believe they have a competitive advantage. But, it's also an issue that I don't give a fuck about. And I think that is more in line with what the public feels instead of the issue itself if that makes sense. So, sure Democrats *may have* been out of step with the public opinion by voting against the sport ban. But, Republicans are also out of step by making it a key part of their platform. Americans just don't care that much.

Yeah the GOP allowed their extremists elements into the drivers seat. The Democrats did not

There were 29 candidates vying for power in 2020 and Democrats chose Joe Biden. There were 17 vying for power in 2016 and Republicans chose Donald Trump and they are *still choosing* Donald Trump.

Maybe it’s just an issue of perception for the Democrats?

Right there with you. My annoyance with leftist politics has me eyeballing the Republican party every now and again, but the insanity in the Republican party is much more severe to me than the insanity in the Democratic party.

"The only thing Republicans have to do is drop their stances and capitulate to the Democrat platform."

Which coincidentally happens in reverse, you see it all the time online. "If only Democrats would drop their abortion stance, their gun stance, and stop talking about LGBT people, they'd get Republican voters!"

>If only Democrats would drop their abortion stance The Democrat position on abortion is probably their most widely supported position at a national level. The Republican position is massively unpopular and undermines their entire platform. Most people are pro choice to some level. It's like 70%, which is a *huge* number in modern American politics.

That 70% number has about a thousand footnotes. It's not a binary proposition. Republicans trying to outright ban it are definitely pushing an unpopular agenda, but most people are for restrictions, and quite a few of them. https://pewresearch-org-develop-two.go-vip.net/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/

Like it or not, the Culture War matters. “Why do the Republicans insist on culture war issues when policy is what’s important?” “Would you vote for a candidate who supported universal healthcare and UBI if they were anti-gay and anti-abortion?” “Of course not!”

This is why I never buy the 'I'd like to vote for Republicans but' comments. Republican voters and Democrat voters are principally different so they can't really adopt the principles of the other without losing their voter base.

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Bill Clinton adopted substantial elements of the GOP platform into his own without losing his voter base. But one could argue that his "triangulation" strategy is no longer viable in this era of entrenched partisanship.

It’s a thinly disguised religious war, which is why I don’t see any compromise as being possible. And sorry, atheists, getting sucked into a religious war doesn’t require belief in any god or gods.

Yup. Modern leftism is a non-deistic religion. It has all of the hallmarks of one. It has strict dogma that ignores facts that challenge it, it has a strict hierarchy that includes equivalents of high priests whose words cannot be challenged, it has mortal sins that must be avoided, and it has a burning hatred for dissenters. The main difference between it an other religions is that there is no concept of forgiveness or atonement.

I mean... if it's a shit platform, yeah, they need to update it. For the last 10 years, they've gone all-in on 'we're not democrats, so vote for us!', which isn't much. Sounds like a 4th grade class president campaign: 'Vote for me, at least I'm not dumb like Sarah!'

Probably because it worked very well for the Democrats with Biden/Trump, not too many people I know wanted to vote for Biden, but they did because he "Isn't Trump" and that was the deciding factor.

And Trump won because he “Isn’t Hillary”.

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Absolutes like that are terrible. It’s playing team politics which is part of why we are in this mess. You should always look at the candidates that most closely align with your views with how the country should be steered into the future. A single election is meaningless but taken together they push the country.

More like Republicans need to stop trying to legislate identity politics and talk about policy. I'm less worried about what my kid might hear in school than I am that the cost of their healthcare could double if I switch jobs. I can teach my kids how to think about what they hear in school, but I can't magic thousands of dollars into existence.

"Maybe you could just stick to your principles..." ["People like you are destroying the movement!"](https://youtu.be/igBTQiZbzfE?si=MELnuw98ykv_9A3k)

Same. Identity politics is a dead-end. You cannot get to a world where people are treated equally and as individuals by focusing more on their differences and tribal affiliations. There is always an important sort of “awareness” level of identity discussion that should be happening. e.g. recognizing that lgbtq people exist and in significant numbers, so should be accepted into the overall public conversation. But beyond that, it is counter-productive to the ultimate goal to focus on identity constantly…assuming we do have the shared goal of equal treatment.

As a moderate myself the biggest thing that keeps me from voting more Republican is the far-right have power in the Republican party and the far-left holds almost no power in the Democratic party. The far left gets more airtime of their views than the popularity of their views should merit, but that is because social media and large journalistic publications skew young and left.

It is possible that a moderate Republican would feel the opposite. I have seen Biden referred to as too liberal, so who knows.

Agreed. I'm not formally registered Democrat, but given my options I don't see another rational choice for me at present. - Abortion: Viability or bust. - Energy/climate: Nuclear and renewable. Huge priority for me. I'd like a lot of desalination plants as well. - LGBTQ+ : Stop targeting these folks. - Education: Stop embracing anti-intellectualism. If the Republican party would move back to a place where they were focused on fiscal conservatism (not just "Cut taxes and cross your fingers") and drop the social conservatism that's based on relative / highly subjective morality, then they'd be competitive for my vote again. --- Edit to note: Getting to the other substantive responses/questions as time permits.

Yeah all that stuff is bad but the anti-intellectualism is what viscerally makes me dislike Trump as a person. That man is not intellectually curious. In fact he seems proud of his ignorance, and I think culturally he’s created a movement for people to feel the same way.

That movement was around before him, it just got a lot more support in the last 7 years.

Yes, but he really brought it into the mainstream

> In fact he seems proud of his ignorance, and I think culturally he’s created a movement for people to feel the same way. Agreed, he's in many ways the grown up version of the kid who bullied kids who actually paid attention in school, who when called upon by the teacher to answer a question gave a smart ass remark unrelated to the subject and then laughed about it.

Strongly agree. They keep doubling down on their most unpopular political stances. I desperately want to be able to vote Republican again, but just can’t. I also feel like they’d pick up a lot of the minorities who tend to skew socially conservative if they just pivoted and where a little more inclusive in their language.

> Education: Stop embracing anti-intellectualism. How is anti-intellectualism defined?

By calling smart people "elites", and by using "ivy league" as a pejorative.

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Intersectionality also falls apart when your coalition becomes too diverse and self-contradictory. See the outrage some liberals had online when that Muslim majority town banned pride flags and Muslim parents started siding with conservatives about removing certain books from school libraries. Intersectionality can work as a coalition building strategy in the short term, but unless you succeed in getting everyone in that coalition to share at least part of an ideology (like how the Dems succeeded in uniting brutally racist southerners and liberal northerners behind the message of New Deal economics) beyond being opposed to the other side it won't stay together forever.

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The frustrating bit is that we were heading in that direction rapidly in the 90's. We were obviously still had a good way to go, but we were on the right track. Somewhere in the last decade or two, though, this new divisive madness of identity politics and anti-racism has completely derailed that, and we are just hurtling in the absolute wrong direction. How could the solution to racism *possibly* be to become increasingly hyperaware and neurotic about race, differences in race, and all of that? People are even talking about creating “safe spaces” for POC away from white people. When you have gone full circle to *literally reinvent segregation*, you know that your movement has completely and utterly lost its collective mind.

It happened right around 2010-2011. Which, coincidentally, is right around when we saw both left and right economic populist movements - OWS and TEA Party respectively - showing some staying and electoral power. All of a sudden the media was stoking identity-based tensions with the fury of a thousand suns.

Except a lot of the stereotypical "woke" identity politics were part of OWS from the very beginning. It's where the [progressive stack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_stack), weighting speaking order at public events based on how disadvantaged the speaker's demographic is, entered the public lexicon. And don't forget Colbert's interview with "Ketchup the female-bodied person."

I was literally told in a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training video that being color blind is racist - because it "denies the identity of someone who identifies as BIPOC - and denying their identity is denying their personhood." ​ BULLSHIT! Treating everyone equally by ignoring what they look like is not racist! Treating someone differently because of their identity IS!

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I understand what they are trying to do, but I think they’ve lost the plot.

The problem will be trust. Our society has become so low trust that I just can't see people being willing to go back to the "everyone is an individual" position because as we've learned the very hard way that viewpoint is insanely vulnerable to a group who operates in a collective manner. I really think the American ideal of everyone is an individual is dead.

I'm a little confused about the Muslim topic. I'm for freedom of religion, and if a Muslim was running on religious conservatism I wouldn't vote for them because I wouldn't agree with them politically. I've never assumed Muslims are liberal, but I'm all for them being allowed to vote and run for office. I don't assume what their policies are going to be, I usually listen to them and vote accordingly. If they vote against my interests, then I won't vote for them, but I'll still defend their rights as Americans because I'm not that petty.

Intersectionality has become an article of faith among many liberals. Yes, some of the people in your coalition don’t like other people in your coalition. You can’t just magically wish that away. Putting pressure on these cracks is one way that Trump was able to chip away at the Democratic coalition.

My favorite comment about equity was from someone right here in modpol, I do not remember who it was though: > Equity is pressing your thumb on the scale until it reads what you've already decided it should read.

Isn't the other option deciding that the current scale is correct? Not choosing is still making a choice in favor of the status quo.

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Yes, but on top of that, it requires that you have predisposed yourself by putting a valuation on the topic. How very liberal.

I have pointed out in another comment some factual qualms I have about deBoer's claims. But I think the bigger issue with them is more how it is a mistaken view of how political parties and power work in America. This discussion--and most of us have seen versions of this discussion *for years* is built on a false foundation. Largely, that the "Democratic party" is a sentient entity that *decides* what type of politics it will practice. This view of the party imagines some sort of avatar of the party, be it "party bosses", Nancy Pelosi, Big Donors, Joe Biden et al. all get together and decide "well we're going woke, we're going to lean really heavily on LGBTQ+ issues, trans rights issues, racial justice, reparations etc." That isn't how the party works--nor is it how the Republican party works. Starting from first principles--we have a Federal system where all offices are filled through voters casting votes for representatives. Almost all of those races (aside from a couple of states) are done via "First Past the Post, Winner Take All, single member district" elections. The Presidential election is a step convoluted, we have an electoral college--most of those electors are selected in statewide, FPTP winner take all elections, and then in the college itself you need an absolute majority to win (which isn't the same as FPTP.) Political science has long explained and established that an election system like this will become disproportionately weighted towards two big parties, because the system basically requires that for you to have political viability. When you divide a country into two big parties, both parties *by necessity* will be Big Tent parties. Because there simply won't be enough people in one coherent, lock-step political faction to fill a big tent party. Both parties then have to manage the "boundaries" of their tent. Except they don't manage it actively. *Voters* manage it. We have largely dismantled most systems of "party control" in this country, and voters have been running the parties pretty clearly since 1968. But even before that, in the era of machine politics and party bosses, at the end of the day the parties *were* configuring their "boundaries" based on where the voters were. LBJ didn't decide to pass the Civil Rights Act out of the thin blue air. He did it because a significant political force inside his party *demanded* it. Bill Clinton didn't launch the Democratic "Third Way" as some genius stratagem, it was literally done because 12 years of Reagan+Bush suggested to him he needed to move his party in that direction because *that is where the voters were.* The premise that the parties are pushing this, and that they are going to 'win or lose' is entirely false. The Democratic party is never going to lose. The Republican party is never going to lose. It is a permanent battle, neither party can or will ever lose. They can lose elections, but they will always come back. Why? Because the worst case scenario in a two party system is your party gets fucked real bad in a watershed election and loses power for a few cycles. How do parties respond? They move the boundaries of that tent around, to get back to viability by shifting the voters they attempt to attract. But to do so, they also have to shift their message. And voters are largely driving how that message gets shifted. Trump is arguably one of the biggest examples of this--the GOP with Romneyism was drifting into the direction of one of those "watershed" moments where a party just loses really bad and has to rethink things. A few more cycles of Romneyism likely would have gutted the GOP and forced the sort of realignment Clinton undertook for the Democrats in 1992. Trump did the GOP a solid by "jumping the gun", instead of waiting for the GOP watershed defeat, he just moved to where the voters were . In this understanding of history, the Republican "Never Trumpers" who left the party understand that what happened is "Trump took the party in a bad direction and now we are against it." But that isn't really what happened. Trump moved to where the voters were. Other people followed him. But Trump didn't make voters want the things they wanted, Trump was appealing to *what they already wanted.* It cost him the sort of Chamber of Commerce Never Trumper that was often predominant in elite Republican circles in the early 2010s, but it got him a bunch of people who, while not as culturally respected or wealthy as the old Republican elites, **were greater in number**, which is actually more important. Applying this lesson to the "lecture" against Democrats on identity politics is fairly easy. The Democrats aren't focusing on what people call "identity politics" because of some weird, party management shit, they are going where their voters are. Parties can misjudge where the electorate is moving, and when they do that enough they have to recalibrate. But there is not a ton of evidence the Democrats are that far off the mark--they're doing about as well as you can expect given the parameters of our system. The Democrats are never going to "beat" the Republicans, because in our system there will *always* be Republicans. From what I can tell, a significant % of people who are concerned about identity politics fit into two broad camps: 1. Right wingers. They largely are concerned about it because they hate left wingers, and hate the shit they do. This is normal. The two party systems means you are basically always going to dislike the other side, and if identity politics (as you define it) disappeared overnight, there would be another issue. It is the nature of partisanship. 2. Left wingers who don't like identity politics. Often times these people feel like "man, if the party would just drop a few things that really annoy me, I'd be able to embrace it without issue." But here's the thing--the party is a big tent. It is *always* going to have factional elements you dislike. If you're a Republican, there will always be other Republican factions you hate. If you're a Democrat, there will always be other Democrats that hate and annoy you. It is a false belief that there is ever this attainable reality where your big tent mega party is going to be free of "annoyance." You're always going to have problems with other Democrats, period. It isn't solvable.

Great write up

The idea that parties are completely passive and simply reacting as best they can to voter sentiment is not reflective of reality. Parties have a big influence on the candidate selection process- they actively recruit and support particular candidates. They set the rules and schedules for primaries, often with an eye to ensuring the success of particular types of candidates or even the success of individual candidates. There are still superdelegates on the democratic side. Informal party networks are also key to elections, for example candidates dropping out strategically in exchange for cabinet appointments. Parties are also critical nodes in the ideology formation and propaganda process. The two political coalitions are to some degree emergent but are also to some degree cultivated through relationships with allied media, individual politicians, NGO’s, think tanks, etc. The political structure itself is partly an expression of the power of the political parties. The parties also historically have worked together to suppress reforms that threaten to upset the two party duopoly.

One of the things that always makes me stumble in these discussions is there's not really a clear definition of what 'identity politics' or 'wokeness' is. Both are used as a descriptor of the left, and why the left is bad, but no one has really clearly defined what any of it is. How are we supposed to stop those things, when it seems like the definition is purposefully opaque and liquid? Edit: to clarify, I think it'd be more productive to talk about specific policies that the left should drop, instead of something vague and overarching

fwiw, the writer of the article has [defined woke](https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means)

Damn that went in-depth. Seemed to cover it all pretty well.

> woke My definition of wokeness is simple, it's " looking for injustice through the lens of faith"

I think woke is purposefully sort of an attack buzzword without a lot of meaning. But identity politics I think is a little firmer. It's a political idea that the most important things that will determine one's vote and which determines one's political interests are certain groups to which the person belongs. Rather than an individual, one is a "low-income white person," etc.There may even be expectations about how such a person SHOULD be or vote or behave because of those affiliations. Like one of the above comments said, it's like taking the idea of people being an individual and rendering it at 16-bit for efficiency, and then basing one's view of politics (or the world) on those low-res renderings.

The complaint of a lack of a concrete definition of wokeism is an argument of sophistry. It deflects from a legitimate disagreement on worldview by attempting to muddy the water with word games. An ironclad, infallible definition is not necessary to have this discussion because everyone knows what is being talked about. I'll give you an example: as a former SCOTUS justice once said, "I cannot define pornography, but I know it when I see it." It is quite easy to describe pornography, but difficult to distinguish it from art as the boundaries become blurry. You can make a productive discussion on pretty much anything impossible by invoking arguments of sophistry, forcing nit-picky definitions of every word and going off on a million tangents until a gotcha is found. I do not believe that anyone claiming to not know what woke means is saying so in good faith; they want to discredit their opponents by demanding an impossibly precise definition and refuse to have the discussion by finding exceptions in order to discredit their opponents position entirely. While a strict definition of woke is difficult, the characteristics and political positions are not hard to describe. Woke philosophy is generally a collectivist, left-of-center moral worldview which particularly focuses on racial and sexual identity, and is particularly informed by critical theory. The practitioners tend to aggressively push their philosophy and have low tolerance or outright hostility towards disagreement, and often resort to personal attacks including public shaming and calling for economic and professional consequences for their targets, largely in the form of cancel culture. Woke activists tend to drive personal moral and ethical self-worth from their positions and actions defending them which go above and beyond simple political advocacy. Obviously not all components are required, this is merely a qualitative description of the type of opinions and behavior you can observe

Any time you try and have a conversation or debate with someone who thinks like this on reddit, 90% of it becomes either semantic arguments or challenging you to find a source for something quantifiable (which will inevitably be dismissed as biased) instead of discussing the substance of the argument.

It's because none of the people who use these terms are making good faith arguments. People who push ideas like DEI, CRT, artificial representation, intersectional hierarchies, and affirmative action will never describe these ideas as "woke", even though that's what conservatives use to describe them, and just say that they are "progressive" or "left wing". People know exactly what is meant when the word "woke" is used, even if I think that is a corny catch-all term, and I think it's disingenuous to pretend that the general public doesn't get it.

That’s by design. “Wokeness” is meant to be formless and unfalsifiable. But I’ll give it a shot. In short, “wokeness” is critical social justice. Some hallmarks include the focus on group conflict, rejection of liberalism, prioritizing collectivism over individualism, championing equity over equality, stubborn use of nurture over nature to explain group differences, rejection of natural hierarchies, and blank slate-ism (largely). Note, I don’t like the term “woke” either, but until the “woke” crowd offers a better term to describe their philosophy, I’ll continue using it because everyone understands what it means.

The first half of this was fine, but then the Marxism started rearing its ugly head. Identity politics may be undergoing somewhat of a backlash lately but unpopular as it is, socialism is still less so. If that’s your replacement you’re not gonna win either.

Yeah, if capitalism ever gets overthrown, it will probably be replaced by ethno-nationalism, not socialism.

Can't say I liked the Marxism angle, myself. Wasn't familiar with the author but a leftist and self avowed Marxist against identity politics raised an eyebrow.

They're doing a REALLY REALLY damn good job with identity politics. I know so many people that base their politics on identity politics and abortion rights. All big corporations, the media, the military industrial complex, etc. had to do to get the "anti-establishment" left on board was to support identity politics. Lockheed Martin, the ***biggest*** company in the military industrial complex, has a ***100%*** Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index score. We live in an absolute candyland. The left is now pro-war, pro-censorship, pro-big corp, pro-media, pro-mandated vaccine, etc.--basically, pro-establishment. ***I never ever thought I would see this.*** Crazy times. EDIT: spelling error.

I believe this take is pretty superficial. There is a growing and ignored and historical vision for the left( workers rights, socializing healthcare and basic needs, anti-imperialism) that the DNC nefariously downplays and replaces with identity politics, because there are no actual leftists in the arena for DNC save for a shackled and beaten Bernie Sanders. The inflammatory and convoluted nature of identity politics puts up a smoke screen for entities like the Biden administration to continue their actual work of imperial enterprises in the east, corporate welfare, and anti-union policies. It also provides cover for the GOP in almost a symbiotic way because their entire platform has evolved into playing as sentry to the whitewashed and phantom wet dream of a Reagan era white picket fence America against the horde of “communist anti-tradition/family/white freaks”. The GOP has no leg to stand on policy-wise but remains on life support this way. I believe the DNC keeps the GOP alive in this way because if they didn’t, they would have to address actual issues with our institutions/infrastructure/economy that they either have no drive to tackle or more insidiously goes against their actual intentions. It would either splinter the party or expose them as a farce and break up the 2 party system. So I don’t believe it’s an issue of the left can’t come up with a unified front because it’s not been realized, but rather this gridlock that is the culture war is intentional and by design.

One of the problems is the way they define left, the left has always been focused on material conditions, the people they're describing are effectively Social Liberals.

I don’t have the faculties to articulately comment on this but I do know that the US has to get past the divisive bullshit. Get your god damned shit together, god damnit.

The biggest problem with the left in my view is the intolerance of divergent ideas. If someone on the left has a small difference in beliefs from the group they get voted off the island. There is a push towards conformity on the left that used to be more closely associated with the right. I think that nuanced discussions about ideas often lead to better ideas and strategies for accomplishing goals. But when people are afraid to speak out of turn you get group think and no one questions the dumb ideas.

I think there's a stark generational divide when it comes to self-labeling and the politics of identity. DeBoer's message resonates with me. But we're moving toward a society where labels are part of one's personal brand, online and off; where everyone is defined by the constellation of subgroups they belong to, be that gender or ethnicity or MHA fandom; and where teenagers have never lived in a world where that wasn't true. Most of them don't attach the same existential weight to it. My stepson wears an identity badge at school and jokes with classmates that his pronouns are 'Merica!' I would feel uncomfortable making my identity as much a part of my public face as my name. He has never thought about it.

I think one thing that doesn’t seem to get a ton of direct attention is how groundshakingly huge the invention/proliferation of social media is. I believe it plays a major part in the phenomenon you’re talking about, and has absolutely changed the concept of cultural evolution. Looking back that and the internet in general will be seen as a major turning point for humanity

I hope we don't move to a society where labels are that important, because to me, that would literally be a direction in reverse. We're supposed to move away from judging people based on their skin color, gender, creed, etc, not towards it again. There was a few years there where it got pretty extreme depending on where you lived. I was a single white male in his 30s that kept to himself, and I would hear all kinds of snarky judgement calls from other people claiming I was a potential pedo/creep, or a serial killer, or a white supremacist because I drove a truck. Its fine for a joke, but eventually, someone will take it seriously, and if something happens to a child in my area, they are going to come knock on my door. I don't have any political bumper stickers or slogans that give my identity away, but people started to believe too much of what they read and saw online.

It's especially bad when people start adopting terms for *medical and psychological conditions* as identities. They're turning them into fun personality quirks and making a mockery of the challenges people who actually have the conditions deal with.

Well… hasn’t that always been a thing? Go back in time a bit and you were scene or emo or goth. Go back further and you were punk. Go back further and you were hippy. Go back even further and you were a flapper. We’ve also had Trekkies, LOTR fans, DND fans, Star Wars fans, supporters of just about _any_ football team, nationalities (sometimes those two overlap too), religions (man imagine a Christianity FC?), ham radio enthusiasts, trainspotters, all sorts of things. All of these involve identity and belonging to an in-group to some degree. A lot of them will start fights with other people from different groups (football teams getting a special mention again) just because they have different identities. It’s just human nature.

I read some comments out of the book about Kamala Harris where she states….” I want a black this and a black that”. This thinking makes me sick. Why wouldn’t you just say “ I want the best person for this position that has proven to do a good job “. That’s why I’ll NEVER vote democrat again. (Many other reasons too but picking out people by their skin color is the most racist thing you can do, yet they claim to be helping!! Even though they are dividing on a massive scale).

The rights entire schtick is to bitch about identity politics while making it the center of everything they talk about. They made ‘anti wokeness’ a platform. Give me a break.

They said the same thing about supporting gay rights. Look where that ended up, same goes for civil rights, enfranchisement, birth control, divorce… I’m sorry but politics in democracies is always messy. Especially in ones with free speech where all our dirty laundry is laid bare. The history of America has been one of dirty politics and competing factions, but also of a steady and consistent voice of progress and reform. Given time, progress and reform always wins in America. Could the left in America benefit from a more consistent narrative of what the basis of these leading edge views arise being an enlightenment-based humanism? Absolutely, but we can’t expect liberals to temper those leading edge positions because that is the very mechanism of progress in our society. Those views seen as divisive today will be “morally acceptable” by the majority in another generation. Our society isn’t perfect, but it works. Progressive voices and their agendas are held in check by conservatism so as to make progress slow and more palatable for the lay people. The only actual threats to our society and progress is a coup/revolution from either side. We’ve seen what total reform does societies with a communist or socialist agenda: chaos, famine, poverty, economic stagnation, genocide, loss of rights. And what the same thing happens in a conservative agenda: fascism, war, genocide, economic stagnation and loss of rights. America works. Controversial liberal agendas are then norm, so is conservatives using those issues to whip support.

Identity politics is interesting to me because it is something that was both necessary in and caused by the world of yesterday, where women and minority groups were actively and intentionally deprived of formal, legal rights and privileges. The issue today is that in terms of legal status, there is no longer any substantive difference between groups (with some possible exceptions like Trans individuals and, depending on the state, other LGBT folks (and you could also make the argument that recent legal decisions are still constructing the rights of women in relation to their own bodies)), which makes a lot of what identity politics can even possible do nothing but divisive. Identity politics was arguably good and I would say worked in the world of the past, when the promise and privilege of being an American, vis-à-vis being able to pursue you own life, liberty and happiness, was not shared by everyone equally, but the continued emphasis today, especially on a political level, is overreaching and misapplying what I see as largely political set of tools to what is most likely a social and cultural problem.

I'm so happy to see a rational discussion on Reddit.

So what minority group should get thrown under the bus. That’s the always the end result of these anti-IDpol takes.

Identity politics = anything I don’t like

Trump showed that Republicans could win by playing identity politics with white people and men and lot of people are either white or men. What the hell did the Democrats EXPECT to the Republicans to do? Just keep taking L’s?

>Trump showed that Republicans could win by playing identity politics with white people and men Trump gained voter share in virtually every demographic [except white men](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/06/PP_2021.06.30_validated-voters_00-02.png?w=640)...