You know, I think there’s a point that Republicans who are chortling over Elizabeth Warren’s apparent own goal on American Indian ancestry. It’s exemplified in this post by Katie Pavlich at The Hill:
Democrat obsession with skin color and gender as a strategy is starting to fall apart and recent cultural events show us how. Nov. 6 is just around the corner and the battle lines for presidential votes are already being drawn. For Democrats, those lines are being crossed as women and minorities vote on interest, not on identity politics.
Incoherence has never been a barrier to electoral success. If you repeat a nonsensical claim often enough and angrily enough, people will come to accept it. For goodness sake, I seem to recall a successful presidential candidate who did just that.
Democrats are unlikely to abandon identify politics in the foreseeable future. Identity-based grievance is what’s holding their diverse coalition together. As long as they can cling bitterly to it, the various segments of their coalition may not notice that their varied interests are actually in competition with one another.
By contrast, I wonder about the GoP coaltion, which seems to have been blown apart. The only string left seems to be low taxes and hostility to social spending on poor people.
“Democrats are unlikely to abandon identify politics in the foreseeable future. Identity-based grievance is what’s holding their diverse coalition together. “
It’s a rare product that can maintain the same positioning, branding, packaging and advertising campaign indefinitely. The Democrats and their boy crying wolf message remind me more of Strohs than the Coors Silver Bullet.
The Warren story is a good example of the problem. The Boston Globe broke the story that she self-reported as a racial minority because at the minimum it was a novel thing for her to do. Going into the primaries, we shouldn’t expect much range of policy issues, the question is going to be about the personal characteristics of the messenger. And the voters in those primaries will tend to be dominated by progressive activists who will evaluate her social positioning and by party regulars who will be concerned about the need to energize the black vote in the post-Obama era.
AS I’ve said before, RE the Dems, the working class is still waiting. Give us a reason to vote for you, if you have one. Racial division won’t do it. Black and Hispanic men need jobs too.
Oh, as to Warren. My wife is 7/8 Native, she thinks the whole thing is funny. I think she wants to be Prez., and is trying clumsily to diffuse the inevitable Trump attack.
“The Boston Globe broke the story that she self-reported as a racial minority”
They also reported it, lots of detail, that she did not use it to help her gain her positions.
“and is trying clumsily to diffuse the inevitable Trump attack.”
Yup, she is trying to play Trump’s game and it doesn’t work for others.
Steve
@steve, not the issue. She identified herself as a racial minority at multiple institutions, which it turns out identified her as a racial minority hire. It poses two questions:
Is she a racial minority?
If so, how to apportion responsibility btw/ her and those institutions.
No school or employer will ever say they hired someone because of their race or gender, because that would be saying they hired someone who was unqualified.
Oops:
Is she a racial minority?
If _not_, how to apportion responsibility btw/ her and those institutions.