In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Shylock the Jew, in his famous "If you prick us do we not bleed" speech, asserts that the Jew is the same as the Christian: when wronged he will seek his revenge.
With this in mind, consider Floyd Flake's suggestion that the problem of the Democrats is not with African-Americans and women, but with white men. His advice: tone down the rhetoric:
So, for the sake of the Democratic Party's electoral chances and its two historic candidates, two things must occur immediately. One, the racial and gender pitch of the last week must be ratcheted down. No Democrat can win a "racialized" or "genderized" general election. Identity obsession might work in the primaries, but it is off-putting in the general election.
At the same time, of course, race is real in America. So is gender. Racism and gender bias are serious problems. Democrats have to find a way to talk about these issues in honest language - without either mouthing platitudes or breaking out in hives. To his credit, Obama has transcended typical discussions of race in this campaign so far.
Rev. Flake may want to make explicit that which is implicit in his article, namely that identity politics has as its logical end conflict between various identities. The modern Democratic party built itself on what was once called "interest group liberalism." The Democrats of the 60s and 70s, then firmly in control of the federal government, used their power to reward various interest groups to give those groups a stake in the Democratic party's electoral success. This edifice began cracking when the financial reckoning of this gambit came due as well as when various groups (e.g., Reagan Democrats) began to see their interests diverging from other groups in the coalition.
The contemporary Democrats are left less with interest group liberalism than identity politics liberalism. The success of the party lies largely (but not solely) on appealing to women as women, blacks as blacks, Hispanics as Hispanics, etc. Essentially they are saying, "It's in your interest as a member of your race or sex to vote for the Democratic party." Investing so hard in identity politics makes it inevitable that two or more of these groups will fall into conflict as they vie for power within the party. The groups begin to assert their power, leading to political fights such as we see now within the Democratic party. These fights, by nature of the appeals of the Democratic party, must be vicious as they are so tied to voters' very identity.
When you build a coalition based on race and sex it shouldn't be surprising when racial and sexual politics come to the fore. We have learned the script of identity politics and now we see it performed on the world's biggest stage.
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