A Case Study in Identity Politics
Pundits and commentators have made much hay out of the demographic trends in the Democratic primaries. This is really to be expected given the candidates and their policy. Never have voters had to choose between a woman and a biracial (yes, Virginia, Obama's mother is white and from Kansas -- it doesn't get much whiter than that) man. Given the haphazard coalition that the Democrats have cobbled together to form a working majority, it would make sense that identity politics would take center stage, especially so in this historic election.
To further strengthen those politics based on race, age, or gender, Sens. Clinton and Obama do not substantively differ on almost any issue. As much as the "we're the people we've been waiting for" crowd thinks their candidate is an outside-the-beltway reformer, his platform is essentially the same stale, center-left package that we saw from Kerry and Gore. This is why the ABC debate debacle occurred; asking questions on the economy, social issues, etc. doesn't get ratings when the candidates agree on just about everything, not to mention the questions did need to be dumbed down for a network television audience. I recall Ralph Nader calling the 2000 Bush-Gore debates "a cure for insomnia". The previous Clinton-Obama debates were no different. And come on -- voters have had all the time in the world to figure out the issue positions of the candidates and make a comparison. Anyone still on the fence might as well flip a coin.
These wide demographic swings were to be expected given the Democrats' consistent flirtation with identity politics and the lack of substantive disagreement on the issues. What else are voters supposed to use in order to make their decision given two practically identical candidates? Now, whether these rifts heal or not and the coalition regroups by November is still an open question.
Posted at The Wrong Lizard .
- stinerman's diary
- Login or register to post comments
Comments :
Obama in fact directly stole some of his platform
from Kerry (government covers catastrophic medical cases to lower health care costs for businesses and hence employees) and presumably he's borrowed other stuff from Gore and Kerry that I don't know about. Maybe it's stale but it's in line with what mainstream Democratic voters want.
What differences would you like to see in the platforms of the candidates? Myself, I would like to see greater willingness to rethink the war on drugs, but Dems are still much better than the GOP here.
Pundits and commentators have made much hay out of the demographic trends in the Democratic primaries. This is really to be expected given the candidates and their policy.
Maybe so, but when you look at people who specifically say that gender or race is important to their vote, one candidate benefits more than the other (especially on gender). From the PA CNN exit poll
, in a contest Clinton won 55-45:
Was Gender of Candidate Important to You?
Yes (20%) of which 72% went for Clinton, 28% for Obama.
No (78%) of which 50% went for Clinton, 50% for Obama.
Was Race of Candidate Important to You?
Yes (19%) of which 59% went for Clinton, 41% for Obama.
No (80%) of which 54% went for Clinton, 46% for Obama.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
A few issues
For starters, we should start down the road of letting the states do more of the heavy lifting. There should be zero laws on the books regarding drug possession at a federal level. Excessive federal entanglement in local issues is another issue I'd like to see addressed.
A commitment to a Canada-style health care plan is another, I believe, dire issue. Then there's some kooky far-left stuff I'd advocate, such as the abolishment of corporate personhood and IP reform (or is IP reform far-right ... I can never remember). Copyright shouldn't last any more than 10 years and one should have to register a work to get protection; the entire idea of "intellectual property" is a misnomer -- you can't own ideas. The patent system can be salvaged but no patents is better than any patents in the current state.
A strong commitment to alternative voting methods and easier ballot access would be my paramount concern. Our politicians are so slimy because absent a sea change in opinion, once they're elected, they stay elected until they retire or are indicted. Given the vast computer software improvements since 2000, 2010 is going to be a huge year for gerrymandering. After redistricting, the competitive congressional district will be a thing of the past.
Yeah, but only in a Hitler better than Stalin sense. None of the issues I've highlighted are even on the radar for either Clinton or Obama.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Still some issues worth voting for.
Both of the Dems would restore habeas corpus to detainees (at least, both have voted for it in Congress); both would sign employment non-discrimination law; both have voted against border fences and military commissions; etc. So even though we're not talking about a major revolution in American thought (which we need), even the small differences will affect a lot of people.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Good points:
Obama has a slightly better stance on the war on drugs: he's not opposed to the legalization of medical marijuana (although I'd love to see Congress getting that little nugget through both houses), whereas Clinton definitely is. Both would stop raids on medical marijuana dispensieries, which is a small but decent step in the right direction.
The most substantial differences between them seem to be on healthcare (although both are aiming at some form of universal), foreign policy (although I think their differences are more rhetorical than practical), and potential for corruption (a clear winner for Obama). It's also helpful to compare their voting records: last year
Obama was ranked 10th most liberal; Clinton was 19th. So she's a little more center-left than he is, which is about what we'd expect. He's probably a better fit for progressives, although not by a gaping chasm. She's certainly not a neocon, no matter how popular that sentiment is elsewhere 
.
But - and I think we've discussed this before - part of the reason we're vetting their comments so closely is that we're looking for differences. When the policies are mostly similar, we have to go somewhere else to separate them.
Good points on the demographics, as well: she's definitely the winner when it comes to identity politics alone. Or, at least she's pulling in a larger percentage of people who claim that some form of identity politics is central to their decision. That's not a huge compliment.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
There is arguably a fine
There is arguably a fine line between preferring a candidate based on "identity politics" and racism/sexism. If a woman votes for Hillary largely because she's a woman, or an African-American for Obama because he's an African-American, is that not sexism/racism?
I can understand the view that someone who is likely to have shared experiences with similar problems/needs (e.g., "glass ceiling" for women) will be more likely to address such problems/needs, even if another candidate is taking the same positions and saying the same things, but I get the feeling a lot of people just want to see a member of their group (gender or race) become president, period. Not that they'd vote for ANYONE SOLELY on that basis, but that it's a big factor, at least one that makes the differenct in their choice.
There's also the soft racism
of expectations: I'd bet a lot of people who say that race is important to their vote aren't saying they don't like black people: they're saying "I don't think a black man is electable, so I'm going to pick the other candidate instead." That's still a crap way to pick a candidate, and says more about the racial attitudes of the speaker than the supposed political climate, but it's a different angle to consider.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
I disagree. It's certainly
I disagree. It's certainly possible that someone can use such a rationale as cover for their own racism, and I'm sure it happens, but I don't think that's necessarily the case or even generally the case, and I also don't think it's wholly illegitimate to make practical considerations re: electability in choosing the nominee (whether one's assumptions about the prevalence of racism amont OTHERS are correct or not).
I'm not saying I'd base my vote on that consideration, just that I don't think it's fair to criticize those who do in the way that you have.
I'm not sure I understand your comment:
you're saying it's both unlikely and legitimate? I'm just having trouble parsing the meaning of your (very long) sentence.
Assuming that's what you're saying, I'll offer two retorts:
1. On the unlikely factor: the "the nation is not ready to have a black president" argument has been around since the very start of the primary season, and it's not at all uncommon. Heck, before dkos became heavily pro-Obama, you'd even meet it there from people who chose other candidates on ostensibly that reasoning. I say ostensibly because...
2. It doesn't hold much water, and in the course of conversations with people who think "the nation" isn't ready to elect a black president, other (more central) reasons for their opposition usually surface. It tends to be a convenient bait-and-switch on the part of people who haven't done much research into voting trends, but have a "gut feeling" that's more about their perception of race in America than anything else. If you can point me to anyone who's made the "not ready" argument and backed it with any degree of substance, I'll be happy to give it a look.
You may still object to my calling that strategy "soft racism", but I can't think of a better way to describe denying a person of color the nomination based on what you think other people might do. It's a limited, ignorant, and condescending view of race that does nothing but promote stereotypes of white voters while contributing to the electability problem of black candidates.
edit: I should add, of course there are white voters who won't vote for a black candidate. But strategizing around them this way is implicit encouragement of it. Not to mention a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps people of color from gaining access to elected office.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
My "long" sentence was
My "long" sentence was fairly straight-forward and does not require parsing. It's a compound sentence that arguably would have been better as two separate sentences, but not necessarily.
You are indeed misunderstanding me.
Here's what I'm saying, and I'll break it down into smaller sentences for you.
1) You refer to some people who are not going to vote for a black candidate for the nomination.*
2) You note that these people state that their rationale is that they do not think a black nominee is electable.
3) You assert that these people are really just cloaking their own racism in that ostensible rationale.
4) You also seem to be asserting that even if their stated rationale were truly their rationale, it would not be a legitimate consideration in deciding for whom to vote ("That's still a crap way to pick a candidate").
I disagreed with your assertion #3. I don't think that people who offer that rationale are necessarily hiding their true, racist rational. I do not even think that that is generally the case. In other words, I don't even think that most people who offer that rationale are secretly deciding based on their own racism. Thus, I don't think it's fair of you to accuse someone who offers that rationale of being secretly racist, as you seem to be doing (and correct me if somehow I'm misinterpreting, but it sure sounds like that's what you're saying).
I also disagree with your assertion #4, that such a consideration is not legitimate IF one is making such an assumption, correctly or incorrectly, about electability. In other words, it's not inherently "a crap way to pick a candidate" . It may or may not be a valid assumption, but if one believes it to be valid, then such a practical consideration is not wholly illegitimate. It's a practical consideration -- a factor in electability -- which must be weighed against other considerations. And electability is obviously not a minor consideration.
* I'm not saying you were referring to ALL people who will not vote for a black candidate, just those who claim the rationale you cite. I would have made this clear in my enumerated statements above, but I wanted to avoid a compound sentence, for obvious reasons.
We clear now?
By the way, if all you meant
By the way, if all you meant by "That's still a crap way to pick a candidate" was that the rationale was based on an invalid premise -- i.e., if you are simply saying that it is not true that a candidate being black significantly reduces his electability -- then I'd say you're probably right, although I'm not sure. But my reading of that statement of yours is that you are saying that it's an illegitimate consideration in choosing for whom to vote in a primary regardless of whether it's true or not. Which did you mean?
Based on your response,
it seems I didn't misunderstand you, since you addressed exactly what I responded to.
To respond to your responses:
I'm not accusing people who spout the race-electability argument of being "secret" racists: I'm accusing them of "soft" racism. It's a form of cluelessness rather than closeted vindictiveness: that is, they help perpetuate the stereotype even if they don't consciously realize that they're doing it.
"Soft" prejudice is a big problem on the left, and it's been discussed quite a bit not only in the context of race, but also gender, sexuality, religion, etc. It's more typically linked to patronization of minority groups, but I think this is a fair extension of that term. As I noted above, the electability argument is a self-fulfilling one, and in its defeatism only perpetuates the lack of people of color in elected office.
We end up with a conveniently circular argument, all the more pernicious because it allows the speaker to feel secure in his own moral righteousness: "Of course I personally have no problem nominating a person of color, but other people wouldn't vote for him/her, so I won't nominate a person of color." The result: a person of color is not elected, and the political environment continues to be hostile to candidates of color. Furthermore, the speaker can pat himself on the back for not being a racist, even though his actions encourage the problem.
This is as much a problem area as the more overt "I won't vote for a person of color" argument that we'd all agree is racist. A candidate becomes less electable because of the very people who don't think he's electable by other people!
Purely anecdotal, so you can dismiss this: but I've found it's typically an argument of convenience rather than of serious consideration. That factors somewhat into my attitude towards the issue.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Prejudice occurs due to mental segregation
Yes. I think Obama has hit on this quite well in his discussions on the state of race relations here. Soft racism and/or prejudice is a problem, but I fear that some on the PC left would rather have it that way. Let me explain in a stream of consciousness sort of way:
I'd call affirmative action and other programs to be a form of soft racism. They reinforce the notion that we need to look at just the color of someone's skin to determine if they need help. I think previous poverty levels are a better way to help. I don't believe middle or upper class blacks need any assistance.
I recall reading a candidate recruitment pamphlet from the Ohio Green Party that stated quite explicitly that someone like me (white male) should yield to any woman or minority that ran for election (as if the Ohio Greens would ever need a primary).
My point is that racism (soft, hard, or otherwise) will continue to occur so long as we see people as black men or hispanic women rather than just people. Not to toot my own horn but two examples in my family illustrate what I'm talking about.
My fiancée is in charge of scheduling employees at her workplace. One of her subordinates called and expressed some problems with the schedule. The subordinate noted that some of the people would be upset with the hours they were getting this week. Since there was nothing out of the ordinary, my fiancée inquired as to what the problem was. The subordinate mentioned that the black employees were getting more hours than the white employees, and that would cause problems. My fiancée had no clue she had done that because she doesn't try to equalize hours by race. It just so happened that because of certain schedule constraints, those people received more hours.
While at my previous employer (an HBCU) my drivers' side mirror was broken during an overnight shift. I chalked it up to college students pulling pranks or an inexperienced driver. When I got it fixed, a friend of mine wondered if it was because I was white. I had never even considered that being a possibility. Especially since I had cordial relations with the students.
In both stories, we failed to see peoples' races at all, much less the races saying something about the people in general. For any type of racism, sexism, or undue prejudice to go by the wayside we need to stop seeing people as white/black/hispanic/asian and simply as people.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Re: "I'd call affirmative
Re: "I'd call affirmative action and other programs to be a form of soft racism. They reinforce the notion that we need to look at just the color of someone's skin to determine if they need help. I think previous poverty levels are a better way to help. I don't believe middle or upper class blacks need any assistance."
I agree. It would be better if a poor white or asian kid got affirmative action preferences rather than an upper class or upper middle class black kid. It would be more just to the individuals involved. It would be more just from the standpoint of (arguably) more equal opportunity (in the sense that a poor kid starts out with disadvantages) and from the standpoint of upward mobility, and it would avoid the resentment that many whites (and some asians) feel toward blacks over the issue (it may be the number one factor perpetuating racism today), and it would avoid the omnipresent, though unstated, question in people's minds of whether or not that black person really earned their place at the university, the office, etc.
I've heard something like this before...
"I think that we should take into account white kids who have been
disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have
what it takes to succeed."
Now, which presidential candidate was it that said that? :)
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
I still say you
I still say you misunderstood me. You essentially said that, while you were unsure, it seemed to you that I was "saying it's [people using that rationale as a cover for their own racism is] both unlikely and legitimate?" Obviously that's not what I was saying. I was saying that it's not the case with most people who offer that rationale, and that that rationale is not wholly illegitimate (I was NOT saying that using that rationale as a cover for one's own racism is legitimate). So you were mixing up what I was saying. But let's put that aside.
Re: I'm not accusing people who spout the race-electability argument of being "secret" racists: I'm accusing them of "soft" racism...It's more typically linked to patronization of minority groups"
I think you are mixing up some concepts here (no offense intended). First, as you may be implicitly alluding to, "soft bigotry" is more akin to what Bush refers to when he refers to the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that manifests itself in schools not demanding better performance out of poor black students based on some belief, conscious or subconscious, that those kids just can't do any better. It's not the same as saying that the number of white people who are too racist to vote for a black candidate in a general election is great enough to make a black candidate much less electable. Someone who says that may be guilty of bigotry (soft or othwerwise) against WHITE VOTERS, but not against the black candidate.
And if voters with such a rationale are wrong in making that assumption, and the practical effect is to perpetuate the difficulty a black primary candidate faces, that does not make one applying that rationale guilty of "soft racism" against the black candidate either. But of course it would just suck.