by William Skink
Foot-shooting Democrats are doing some damage control to rally support for Kathleen Williams. There is apparent lingering sensitivity over the accusation of playing identity politics to get an electoral edge. Here is trusty Talbot doing the heavy lifting against the penile peers lashing out against half the homo-sapien species:
Merriam-Webster defines identity politics as “a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.”
In Williams’ case, it was her reaching out to women for their vote that generated critiques like “her ugly gender identity campaign.” Guess what, guys — and it was all guys writing this stuff — half the Homo Sapiens in the world are women. It’s hardly an exclusive group — certainly more understandable than the blind allegiance of Trump supporters.
Talbot does interesting things with this comment. He takes the technical definition of the term Identity Politics and uses that to muddy the criticism of identity politics as a political strategy by conflating it with the prevalence of woman who exist as a part of our species across the globe.
That women make up half our species has nothing to do with the criticism of using one’s gender as a valid reason to support that person. If voting for Kathleen Williams is good because she is a woman, doesn’t that imply that voting for John Heenan is bad because he’s a man?
Then Talbot references the “blind allegiance of Trump supporters” without including the recent historical context that we have Trump largely because of the blind allegiance of Clinton supporters who turned identity politics into a cult-like demand for loyalty where the ends justified the means–and the means were ugly as hell.
If there is any takeaway for Democrats as these primaries have unfolded it should be that the corporate/Clinton wing of the party is still actively fighting progressive threats to the status quo. They have learned nothing because their donors require that they learn nothing, so candidates that support policies like Medicare for all lose to candidates who know better and stay silent so as not to upset the party bosses at the DCCC and DNC.
This is partly why Williams’ use of Identity Politics is so maddening. Instead of defending a strategy that lost the presidency to Trump and will more than likely keep Montana’s Congressional seat safe for Gianforte, it might be helpful to acknowledge the critics have valid points, and then acknowledge that ignoring those points have not yet been a successful political strategy.