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The 2024 election tested the limits of identity politics. Not because Kamala Harris was running as a half-black, half-Indian and full-time accent swapper, code switching her way through a multicultural landscape, only to take a beating from a national multicultural electorate.
Call it identity politics, the rainbow coalition or the minority majority, Democrats had tethered their future to defining oppressed groups and organizing them against an equally artificial majority who were given the choice of standing with the oppressed or preserving their privilege.
This construct had so thoroughly defined three generations of Democrat politics with only some very local exceptions that few national politicians know how to run on anything else except organizing racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQAIZ+ people, refugees, drag queens, terrorists, abortionists and illegal aliens into a clumsy alliance to oppose the white cisheteropatriarchy.
Democrat politics had become campus politics. They gave the party such a death grip on major cities and suburban bedroom communities that a Republican big city mayor is a vanishing breed, but they also wiped out the party’s appeal in rural and working class areas.
The underlying assumption of the identity politics electoral strategy was that an alliance between black voters and white liberals could be endlessly replicated by adding new minority groups united by a mutual grievance against the white and male oppressor class. But each addition was also a subtraction, adding new minorities also added new oppressors.
Feminism turned all men into the oppressors while the transgender movement turned women from the oppressed to the oppressors. Asians, Latinos, black men, gay men and Jews have all been denounced as former members of the oppressed who have become the oppressors.
Every time the identity politics coalition expanded it also contracted by creating new enemies.
Identity politics was negative from the very beginning. Its solidarity was just bigotry, its aspirations were grievances and its narratives were conspiracy theories. The only thing keeping its alliances together was the hatred of a common enemy. Not pride, joy or love, but hate.
Hating white people. Hating men. Endlessly harping on their crimes. Devising new terms to demonize those who didn’t base their identities around their sexual fetishes. Contending that America was a hateful place that was always one election away from turning into Nazi Germany.
Hate didn’t just become the center of Democrat politics, but the culture that it controlled.
Academia churned out conspiracy theories ranging from the global to the local. Its new mission became to convince the students passing through its doors that all of life could be distilled to a grand struggle between the white male straight oppressors (and their allies) and everyone else. Popular culture did its best to popularize and universalize these toxic ideas on a national scale.
Hate is hollow. It offers the dubious satisfactions of fear, rage and victimhood. Some are content to live on these dark feasts while pretending that their ugly emotions are morally superior.
The Democrat investment in identity politics however sapped their ability to provide a positive agenda. The traditional socialist standards of the party had to be filtered through equity. Rural white men, who had been a party mainstay, left first, followed by white women and then Latino men. The emergence of new identities alienated existing members of the rainbow coalition.
Class warfare had taken a backseat to every form of identity politics warfare. And despite the intersectional paradigm, the rainbow coalition struggled to keep everyone on the plantation.
What were the Democrats to do when Asians were being assaulted by black criminals? Why should minorities have to pay slavery reparations? Should women’s sports be destroyed by transgender men? Should the party side with Jews or Muslims after Oct 7? Hindus or Muslims over Kashmir and Bangladesh? Should it offend Latinos by insisting on Latinx?
The intersectionality hierarchy told the Democrats to prioritize the most oppressed. So they pretended that Asians were being assaulted by white men. Told women and girls to shut up about men taking away their trophies and bathrooms. Sided with Muslims over Jews and Hindus. Used Latinx as much as they could. And in the process alienated everyone.
Identity politics had been built on a common hatred of a majority, but as the country became multicultural, the resentments and demands became too dynamic to manage. It was impossible to please everyone, like feminists, transgenders and Latinos, at the same time. Intersectionality conveyed to every minority group exactly how much it was or wasn’t valued.
The tighter the hierarchy of victimhood grew, the more discontent it produced.
But the biggest problem with identity politics by far was that it had nothing to offer to non-bigots. Anyone who wasn’t convinced that America had been rigged by some systemic ‘ism’ to personally oppress them was left cold by a movement based around that conspiracy theory.
The Democrats could have built a ‘positive’ movement based on socialism and then added a dose of ‘negative’ class warfare, instead they built a mostly ‘negative’ movement based on hating the right people and knowing your place in a confusingly tangled pronoun hierarchy.
The 2024 election served as the movement’s most urgent warning that it isn’t working anymore.
Growing numbers of the Democrat base demonstrated that they cared more about economic growth than hating white people, hating men or hating any construct of the oppressive ‘majority’. The idea that there is a powerful white man everyone must fight against that is so central to identity politics has slipped its grip on most of the varied groups in the Democrat base.
Hating isn’t enough anymore. But without hatred is there even a party anymore?
Some leftists had been calling on the party to drop its central focus on identity politics and pivot to traditional socialism, but the Democrats are too in thrall to identity politics to escape its pull.
In the seventies, class resentments seemed weaker than the tribal resentments emerging out of the wreckage of the civil rights movement being nourished by racial nationalists in ghettos and on college campuses by the Ford Foundation. Urban areas had begun their slow transformation into third world countries. Dividing up America seemed like the best strategy for the future.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
An entire activist class nurtured on identity politics now makes up the backbone of the Left. Democrat elites are the products of not only DEI training, but DEI morals, their sense of outrage is inflexibility tethered to bigoted conspiracy theories, and there may be no way back.
A movement that lives by hate is now dying of its own poison.
Hate was fundamental to Marxism, fostering hate between economic classes. Come to think of it, hate has been the main unifying force behind warfare since pre-history. How else does one get people to throw their lives away for their leaders?
Not “was” but “is.”
And will continue to be so
You know he means the same thing.
Marxism, the basis of contemporary leftism. Good point.
“The only thing keeping its alliances together was the hatred of a common enemy. Not pride, joy or love, but hate.”
I’ve been saying for what seems like forever that leftism is based on hatred, particularly the “woke” deviants. And all identity politics tribes are at war with the others, no matter how much they all hate whitey.
We all know that self professed identities have replaced class in the Marxist model.
And hating other people only makes the “others” hate back.
Excellent points Jeff, thanks !!!
I’ve got justification to hate certain people, but examining my feelings, I don’t hate them, I just avoid them.
Politicians are t he Lowest form of Life on Earth Liberal Democrats are the Lowest form of Politician. General Patton
Idenity politics , delivered with Alinsky tactics is what Obama introduced to American politics as he removed the need and the want for policies. Politics has because the Democrats house of cards as they turned the citizens into victims and their political opponents into the villain.
Thank you Daniel another spot on article..
Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism, died in 1883 after suffering from puss-filled boils, liver derangement, eye irritations, hemorrhoids and headaches.
Most of these symptoms were self-inflicted after years of excess. He smoked heavily, drank excessively and his diet would kill a trash-eating goat.
When the author of the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was buried, 13 people were in attendance.
All this is a foreshadowing of the death of Democratic socialism in America. There’s no retooling possible when their sole platform is hate and identity politics.
Now, if we could only do away with colleges and universities, where Karl’s ghost primarily resides in the form of tenured professors who’ve never worked a day in their life, spewing hate into the spongy minds of our youth.
One can hope.
Great mini-dissertation.
“Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism, died in 1883 after suffering from puss-filled boils, liver derangement, eye irritations, hemorrhoids and headaches.”
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
And pray. From your lips to God’s ears!!
Beginning with the Clintons, the 30 year grift of the radicalized commie Jihadi DemoCrats has finally come to an end. It continued with the fundamental transformation of grifter No.2, gay Muslim Barry Soetoro. It finally crashed and burned with Demented Biden. Each iteration was worse than what went before. Each iteration needed propping up from an increasingly corrupt “press”.
Can you imagine what a Hilary presidency would have looked like? A scandal du jour. Fortunately Trump won against her and we got to see what normalcy looked like, albeit for four years. Otherwise it would have been continuous scandal and grift, through Clinton, Obama and Biden into the Harris admin. Grift-a-palooza.
Thank God Harris was so monumentally awful as a candidate. Back to normalcy and greatness with Trump 2.0.
Yes, if the Clinthag or the Kamel-ho and won, we would’ve had 20 uninterrupted years of grift-a-pallooza, anti-American sedition, sabotage and overweening incompetence.
Thank God for Trumpy.
Labeling in general eliminates the need to think for yourself. In politics it is a direct result of the 19th Amendment.
Democ-rats are the political undead– ZOMBIES–who may revive at any time because “Hell and destruction are never full” (Proverbs 27:20a).
Excellent analysis and column. But is it not “Democrat politics had become campus politics” but the reverse?
Good point. All left-wing dogma originated in the universities and colleges.
Straight out of the Marxist coffee houses of Europe via our State Dept.
That reminded me, of when I was in Austria, thinking what a great life it would be, to get up every day and sit around in their coffee houses, pontificating about politics 🙂
As long as 40+% vote for such a party, the problem remains.
By 40+% you mean people who vote, of course. Many people don’t vote.
Hatred is from Satan!
Understand that and you understand the world! Leftist Commie Dems are the epitome of hate! There is only one of two ways to be in the world: for God OR against God! Dems are against God as we’ve witnessed in their demonic Democrat National conventions. They’ve pushed God out!
If you look at history, the Leftist Commie Dems are at their weakest when the Conservative Right is STRONG!! We need to be and stay strong to counteract the Satanic Left!!
Love conquers everything. We have our strength by loving our nation and wanting’/acting the best for it. Righteousness!!
‘(DEM)ovement that lives by hate is now dying of its own poison.’ : DOUCHE’ !
Race, sex, being non binary, gender fluid, transgender to whatever, is not a talent or a qualification for any job or political office.
Democrat leaders told all of us that if we did vote for Harris we were racist, sexist, stupid or all three.
The truth is Harris lost because she was a terrible candidate and it was obvious to everyone who bothered to look and listen. She could not answer a question. She never won a primary. She dropped out of the race four years ago because she could not even win her own state of California.
Biden only picked her because she was a woman of color. She was installed as the Democratic nominee after Democrats lied to the country for four years and told us Biden was fine to serve another term as President, when we could all see that was not true.. Even then we were told we had to vote for her because Trump was so terrible,
You cannot insult and lecture people into voting for you. People don’t like it.
Put the deranged, mentally disturbed identity politics sufferers on a good psychiatrist’s couch. Failing that find a prescription=pad practitioner to prescribe a dose of psychopharms to numb those feelings of hatred, resentment, and self-righteousness. A zombie might be less of a threat to society than a mentally deranged Democrat, but then almost half the country would be zombies…
Put them in gulags or banish them.
About 4:30 this AM I was having the first of many cups of coffee while watching a FN report, that many US corporations were trimming or cutting their DEI programs completely. The report went on to say that US business spend more than $8 billion a year on DEI. I doubt that $8B yielded much in the way of profits for these companies. Maybe if they had remembered why they were in business we could have avoided all the mess.
We can always hope.
I assume they’re doing that because Trump is coming in. They had to have hated spending all that money on something they hate and now that they’ll be safe to abolish putrid policies like that once the Big Man comes back. Alzheimer Joe’s handlers cant persecute them in the two scant months they have left to sabotage American society, although I figure they’ll wait till Trump gets in office if they’re serious about their claims.
Your correct Jeff, but they are probably setting up the mechanisms now, just so they can get a jump on each other (the competition), after all nothing beats pleasing the WOKE crowd like making more money.
I’m skeptical and certainly cynical when it comes to the DEMOCRAT PARTY being for ANYONE but themselves (refers to the Dem ruling class), which since Billary Clinton became the party for the 1%, red china, global bribes, banksters and billionaires for open borders.
The Dem ruling class is overwhelmingly a pack of gamer lawyers, the kind Wall Street and the 1% rely on to rig the gig. They care no more for all the DEI folks than they do for middle america, which they destroyed to situate a more benign and compliant Mexican serf class who will always vote DEM FOR MORE.
DEM party rulers LIE, CHEAT, and COMMIT TREASON to serve themselves and the 1%. They hide their crimes behind identity politics to deflect class politics….. BUT STILL the billionaire class are building their bunkers in Hawaii. Guess they figure the ‘unwashed’ will not march across the Pacific to talk economic equality at their gates.
….. well, maybe not, but i would not bet on it!!!
Here’s one of the Dems’ gamer lawyers:
What is wrong with California? Everything. Especially Adam Schiff
By Patricia McCarthy
Despite the glorious victory of Donald Trump on Nov. 5, there are some sad tales that prove, without a doubt, that some voters are colossally ignorant or mindlessly accepting of evil.
How on earth does a man so corrupt, a man with a record of lying that may surpass Kamala Harris’s, win his election to an office in the Senate?
Adam Schiff is not only a known liar, he’s a pathological liar.
Adam Quiff didn’t win the election. I live in California and we hate him even more than the rest of the country. No, he can only “succeed” through massive vote cheating and fraud.
Of course!! That explains it. How was I confused? Same ole, same ole.
When a party demonstrates its intolerance to anything and everything different from their espoused doctrine of perpetual hate and nullification, and then venomously attacks those who do not conform, eventually the minority in control lose the goodwill of those people over whom they felt absolute power. Yet, when their continued arrogance causes the innocent to become their victims, sooner or later a threshold of suffering is crossed and people begin looking elsewhere for answers.
The Democratic Party is intolerant, sexist, racist, self-centered, angry, hateful and its most basic desire is absolute totalitarian rule over others. If they do not have the capability for both individual and collective introspection they will remain the political litter over which Americans will continue walking in their quests for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as provided through our inalienable, G-d given rights and our legacy of individual freedom as the very foundation of both our Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.
Hooray for those who have finally awakened to their individual rights by leaving the burdensome, collectivist plantation of never-ending hate and poverty in the rear view mirror! Looking ahead there is the bright sunlight of achievement, prosperity and many individuals coming together as one nation, under G-d, with liberty and Justice for all by working together and Making America Great Again!🇺🇸
Great comment. All one has to do is look at what extremes the Dems are willing to go in order to gain/retain power. That alone is enough to make me want to keep them as far away from the levers of power as possible.
Once again, Daniel straddles the line between cogent, deeply felt analysis and poetry. I find myself going back to re-read paragraphs just for the pleasure and beauty of the writing. Bravo (yet again), Mr. Greenfield!
The problem with any party whose raison d’etre is to get justice for the needy, as with the unions, is that, sooner or later, most of the changes worth achieving happen. At which point, your honest reformers should rejoice at being redundant – but instead they invent new crusades in support of completely unreasonable causes.
Change is the name of the game. We’re easily bored.
They, the unions, could save themselves a lot of time and money if they’d just come out and admit they are communists. The feeling I always got, when working union jobs, is they would rather own the companies that hired them than work for them.
As Mel Brooks once said, “The best way to fight evil is to laugh at it.” As a strong advocate of this approach, I give you Tom Lehrer with his take on our American prejudices.
National Brotherhood Week
Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks
And the rich folks hate the poor folks
All of my folks hate all of your folks
It’s American as apple pie
Praise God for Tom Lehrer!! I love me some of that…
Dan Bongino said on his show today that the Democrats were hopelessly immersed in identity politics. If they rejected identity politics, they would lose support from George Soros.
We forget too soon – because we do not have a functioning opposition party – that the Democrat party is the Jim Crow Party. Established and run by racists.
In my lexicon, ‘Activist’ equals troublemaker and ‘Community’ equals ghetto.
The commies in Western countries are trying to divide the nations into multiple ghettos over which they expect to have total control.
I suspect that like all things that are anti-God, these commie plans will eventually come to nothing. It just takes time. And perhaps a generation or two of new people in the world.