Tuesday night’s election results were a major shot in the arm for the anti-Donald Trump resistance and a major slap in the face for all the Democrats who caterwauled last November about how the party had focused too much on courting women and minorities, and ignored angry white men.
That is how today’s New York Times column by Charles M. Blow, titled Resistance, for the Win!, begins.
It is a column well worth your read, and I am going to urge you to do so.
I am not going to spend as much time parsing it as is my wont, although I will share a bit.
Before I do, let me note the following:
- of the 15 House of Delegates seats in Virginia that Dems picked up, 11 were by women, including not only Danica Roem as a transgender woman (and she is NOT the first such state legislator, as MA had one preiously), but the first two Latinas in in the general assembly
- we saw Blacks elected as mayors across the country, including in places like St. Paul MN
- in Virginia, if one trust the Washington Post exit polls, the pattern was unmistakable:
Northam won the following groups
-- Woman 61-39
— Blacks 87-12
— Latinos 67-32
— net Non-Whites 80-19
a couple of comments about the above data, if I may. I think the break among Latinos actually understates Northam’s performance, in part because there may have been an undersampling of that population where those who are more recent citizens are concentrated in some areas not part of the poll. I do not know that, but I can look at the results of some precincts in various jurisdictions that are heavily Latino and see results that are more anti-Trump. Also, despite what some pundits have said, Northam ran a campaign that did focus on issues, especially health care (he is a doctor) and that is an issue than transcends most identity groups, and was by far the most important issue (the other exits show it as the top issue for 39% of voters, with no other issue exceeding 17% and Northam winning handily among those for whom it was the top issue).
So let me return to Blow’s column:
Blow is strongly pushing back against the notion that identity politics is a shibboleth, that addressing the issues of those traditionally left out somehow is what hurt Democrats in 2016 and earlier. Consider this:
Objecting to identity politics is just a guise for objecting to politics for and about people who are not white, because as the British feminist author Laurie Penny explained to Salon in August:
“All politics are identity politics, especially the politics of the far right. They’re about this idea of white identity, this idea of male identity that feels so under attack at the moment. When people attack identity politics, they are attacking politics that prioritizes or even includes women, people of color, queer people.”
Blow of course rejects this, because as a Black man he has experienced it.
He views those in the Democratic party who argued about pursuing the angry white male portion of the electorate as allowing their politics to become situational, that they are pursuing mollification.
Consider these two powerful paragraphs:
For me, there is no middle: If you are supporting Donald Trump, you are supporting Trumpism and all that goes with it. That means that you are supporting a modus operandi that attacks people of color on every term, but keeps white supremacists safe. You are supporting Trump’s demeaning of women. You are supporting his bullying. You are supporting his corruption. You are supporting his pathological lying.
It is not the job of the resistance to drag you out of that. It is the job of the resistance only to be there when and if you tire of the darkness and crawl out into the light.
There are more powerful paragraphs, but I will let you read them on your own.
Except I will offer this Blow’s final paragraph:
Playing to the identity politics of Trump-loving angry white men — a clear expression of white supremacist patriarchy — isn’t a panacea. It’s not even prudent. And conversely, inclusive identity politics isn’t a poison. White supremacy, and the panic induced when that supremacy is threatened, is the poison.
Let me opine a bit further:
I am not arguing to pursue a specific identity politics. I agree with Blow that focusing on the angry white man is stupid, depresses turnout of those who would support a more inclusive approach. It is also generationally stupid, because younger people are much less concerned with white or male privilege, and much more inclusive by their own life experience. Returning again to the Post exit poll, Northam won voters ages 18-29 by 69-30. More importantly, enough of them turned out to make up 14% of the electorate.
Ralph Northam is a white male. His policies were inclusive of ALL Virginians. He was addressing the needs of ALL of the Commonwealth, regardless of gender, skin color, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation.
Yes, he won heavily among the better educated. Maybe that is why so many Republicans are for cutting public education, and of course Trump did say he loved the poorly educated.
Dems may not be able to win over substantial chunks of the Trump base, but an approach that establishes a moral basis to meet the needs of all people, which does not seek to divide us by categories, or to pit one group of voters against others, encourages more people to turn out, and THAT is how Democrats can win even in seats gerrymandered to give Republicans an advantage.
Please, go read Blow’s column. You will be glad you did.
And also this — make sure your own political advocacy is inclusive. Anything else is immoral.
Peace.