In the fierce post-election debate about how Democrats should respond to the party's astonishing electoral collapse at all levels of government, some have argued that identity politics is the problem, while many others (especially younger activists) have claimed it's the solution.
Those inclined toward the latter position would be well advised to read a recent New York Times story
very closely. An account of growing rancor surrounding the planned
Women's March on Washington (scheduled for the day after Donald Trump's
inauguration), the piece demonstrates with admirable clarity how
doubling down on identity politics — and especially the left's embrace
of the trendy postmodern ideology of "intersectionality" — is likely to
shatter the Democratic Party into squabbling factions even more
vulnerable to a resurgent right.
It would be one thing if Democrats had reason to hope or expect that they would be saved by demographics. Ever since the "emerging Democratic majority"
thesis (sold in bookstores and on-line in 2004) was first floated more than a decade ago, leading liberals have
been convinced that their side is bound to prevail as the country
becomes less white over time and minority groups eventually combine to
form a left-leaning electoral majority. In such a situation, a politics
based on racial, ethnic, gender, and other forms of identity might make
sense as a mobilization strategy.*
Trump comes along, and invades the linear and growing inclusion of gays, educated women, conservative Hispanics with nowhere to go outside of the Democrat Party, and a smaller but significant number of blacks, tired of living in the inner city with no hope, and, suddenly, the unavoidable success of the Progressives becomes old news and without relevance ~ editor
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* Italicized text from Liberals are drunk on a political poison called intersectionality
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