Donald Trump’s presidential win should signal the end of liberal identity politics

[Aloha_Shooter]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/25/mark-lilla-columbia-professor-slams-narcissistic-i/


“Democrats have simply lost the country,” he said. “They have lost the capacity to speak to the vast middle of America, an America that is, in large part, white, very religious and not highly educated.
“Ever since Reagan, [Republicans have] been able to capture the message and an understanding — or persuade people of a certain understanding of what the nation is about and what’s good for it,” he added.




“To take one example,” he continued, “the whole issue of bathrooms and gender — in this particular election, when the stakes were so high, the fact that Democrats and liberals, more generally, lost a lot of political capital on this issue that frightened people. People were misinformed about certain things, but it was really a question of where young people would be going to the bathroom and where they would be in lockers. Is that really the issue we want to be pushing leading up to a momentous election like this one? It’s that shortsightedness that comes from identity politics.”


Katherine Franke, a law professor, wrote an article (http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/making-white-supremacy-respectable/) this week comparing Mr. Lilla to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for rejecting the “whitelash” narrative that racial animus led to Mr. Trump’s election.
...
Mr. Lilla said he was “very glad” to read Ms. Franke’s article, “because it showed exactly what I’m talking about.”
“The only response I would have is, I rest my case,” he told NPR.



I guess not all Ivy League professors are ideologically-driven idiots ...

[roberth]

Good and the PC bullshit along with it.

[Rumline]

“Democrats have simply lost the country,” he said. “They have lost the capacity to speak to the vast middle of America, an America that is, in large part, white, very religious and not highly educated.
What he means is that Republicans are mostly ignorant bigots, so no wonder the Dems can't connect with them: only the truly enlightened can see the emperor's fine robes.

I agree with the author's premise that it should mean the end of identity politics, however all I've seen since the election is a doubling-down on the same pre-election rhetoric. ("Trump is an unhinged racist extremist who has breakfast with David Duke and afternoon tea with Hitler")

[roberth]

What he means is that Republicans are mostly ignorant bigots, so no wonder the Dems can't connect with them: only the truly enlightened can see the emperor's fine robes.

I agree with the author's premise that it should mean the end of identity politics, however all I've seen since the election is a doubling-down on the same pre-election rhetoric. ("Trump is an unhinged racist extremist who has breakfast with David Duke and afternoon tea with Hitler")

The doubling-down thing is just another indicator of an irrational and unstable human being.

[Zundfolge]

It should, but it won't.

There's a tendency for zealots to double down when confronted with evidence they're wrong. This is what the SJWs and the Regressive Left will do.

[fitz19d]

Ya, the politics places I lurk hoped this would turn them around.

Instead the media and the regressive left/ Ctrl Left/ far left have doubled down.

[ray1970]

"Ever since Regan..." blah, blah, blah.

I seem to recall at least 16 years of the Republican Party not connecting with the public. Hence we had people like Clinton and Obama in office.

[JohnnyDrama]

Interesting you should see and post this today. I heard a similar thing on the radio this morning.

Here is an excerpt from an interview I heard on NPR. Steve Innskeep is interviewing Sen. Amy Klobuchar D-MN regarding a Democrat party check against the Trump Administration.


INSKEEP: What lessons did you draw from the fact that Democrats lost so many elections this time around and have done quite poorly for quite some time now?


KLOBUCHAR: Well, I think that this election became dominated by what President-elect Trump would say. And then we would be responding to that as opposed to being able to come out from under that with a strong agenda. I watched every one of those debates. And in my mind, Hillary Clinton won those debates. But somehow the message got muddled. And it got away from a message that unified people and got more focused on standing up for individual groups, which is of course important and I will always do. But we lost that unifying message about the economy, about what our policies were that would help people.


INSKEEP: We had a historian, Mark Lilla, on the program on Friday who argued the Democrats had lost their way by focusing too much on identity politics, appealing to specific demographic groups rather than the country as a whole. I think you just said the same thing.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I think we need a unifying message to transcend any one community. That does not mean that we don't stand up for individual communities.


... and so on. She basically doubles down. Anyway, I was surprised to see her get called out like that. When I heard this I thought "Well, this is the end of identity politics". But not so fast. My hope is that maybe a few hard core liberals may have heard this and as the words sink in, they will question the cause they have sworn themselves to.

Here's a link to the full interview.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/29/503693384/democrats-prepare-for-chances-to-serve-as-a-check-against-trump

[Skip]

It should, but it won't.

There's a tendency for zealots to double down when confronted with evidence they're wrong. This is what the SJWs and the Regressive Left will do.

This.

I can chart the trajectory of identity politics in my lifetime and tell you the trend line is going in the wrong direction.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I'm not holding my breath on this and I don't exactly identify with the professor's agenda but at least there are some people on the opposite side of the aisle who recognize they are doing the wrong thing. The ones doubling down will likely end up like Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, I just hope they don't take the rest of us with them. I am also not so keen for the regressive Stalinists to recognize they are losing the country only to do just what they need to win politically but still go down their unconstitutional anti-Western anti-American anti-Christian path in the same way Deng Xiao Ping turned around China's economy but left in the corrupt Communist bureaucracy.

In any event, it's interesting to see them argue amongst themselves like the Republicans have been doing.