There was a time when it was considered "un-American" to play one group of Americans off against another. Such efforts smacked of demagoguery and undermined the shared commitment to an "American Creed" consisting of freedom and justice for all (however inconsistently applied or unrealized in practice).
This has obviously changed, as the Democratic Party has now enshrined "identity politics" as the centerpiece of its ideological program and electoral strategy, with troubling consequences for both it and the country as a whole. This is because identity politics is a double-edged sword that likely alienates more voters than it attracts and, by definition, sows divisions among the citizenry that undermine any sense of shared national values or purpose.
For example, as the Democratic Party becomes increasingly dependent upon African American support it also becomes increasingly hostage to radical movements like Black Lives Matter and must buy into the image of American society as still irredeemably racist. White people are, within this narrative, the undeserving beneficiaries of the nonsensical concept of "white privilege" and carry the burden of proving they aren't racists simply because of the color of their skin and the fact that they are in the majority.
Democrats can't acknowledge the tremendous strides our country has made toward racial equality in recent decades without risking the loss of their most reliable voting bloc. It is, as a result, forever Selma (even if it isn't) and white folks are forever racist (even if they aren't).
Such an approach also sends the Democrats into a potentially irreversible electoral nose dive--as persistent accusations of racism drive the white majority away, the need to mobilize the black vote come election time increases and requires the inflaming of racial tensions.
The same pernicious, zero-sum tendencies apply to other groups in the Democratic base--the need to rally single women requires a caricature of American society as hopefully sexist and "patriarchal" and prevents any acknowledgement of the progress made toward women's rights, because giving such credit (however warranted) would run the risk of weakening the turnout of single women on behalf of Democratic candidates.
To mobilize Hispanics, Democrats must depict an American society pervaded by nativism and xenophobia, to solidify LGBT support they must depict an America under the irrational throes of homophobia (despite the massive sea-change in public opinion toward gay marriage), and to attract Muslim support and further fill out the coalition of the oppressed, it becomes necessary to create a bizarre psychological condition of "Islamophobia," as well as to take great pains to never utter the phrase "Islamic terrorism."
In the end, to cobble together their minority-majority "coalition of the ascendant," Democrats must not only embrace the toxic notion of race, ethnicity and gender as destiny, but also demonize the majority of their fellow citizens who don't fall into the victim categories they have constructed.
In the Democrats' identity politics theology, with so many victims requiring their protection, there must logically also be victimizers, and it isn't all that hard to figure out who they are.
It is not surprising, then, that white married couples with kids who work hard, play by the rules, pay most of the taxes, and commit the politically incorrect sin of popping into church now and then no longer feel all that welcome in the Democratic Party. As the designated scapegoats for all the nation's ills, for its racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., it would be downright bizarre if they did.
Such folks have, by virtue of the left's culture of victimhood and grievance, become objective ideological enemies, guilty not because of their actual behavior or beliefs on an individual level but because of their pigmentation on a collective one. The problem isn't anything they have done but what they are; by such thinking, primitive forms of ascription return from our medieval past.
Of course, depicting people as villains isn't usually the best way to win their votes, and it might even provoke a ethno-nationalist backlash that would genuinely threaten the rights of women and minorities--if Donald Trump is indeed the racist, sexist bogeyman of leftist fever-swamp depiction, then his rise represents a thoroughly predictable reaction to the shameless identity politics game that Democrats have been playing fire with over time.
Democrats created Trump, whether they're willing to admit it or not.
Within this context, white working-class voters didn't desert the Democrats because they were neglected; they left because they were tired of being continually insulted.
In the end, one wonders if Democrats have gone too far down this rabbit hole to now back out, and whether their radical left social-justice-warrior base will ever permit it.
Democrats thought that a combination of an aggressive identity politics stratagem coupled with demographic shifts away from white America would win for them the future.
Judging by the loss of 60 House seats, 13 Senate seats, nine governorships and more than 1,000 elected state and local offices since Barack Obama assumed the presidency, they were wrong.
And now, having lost the presidency too, they're apparently doubling down.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 03/06/2017