Those of us on the left are often told we should vote for this, that or the other person because… she’s a woman! he’s gay! she’s a woman of color! he’s a black man! The Democratic Party shamelessly exploits the matter of identity, using it to mask issues like inequality, or the need to make systemic changes to our politics and our economic system.
The strategy has been hugely successful for the past 30 years, given that the right wing tends to have more conservative attitudes towards things like race, immigration and sexual preferences. We on the left feel the need to stand up for the underdog, and the right has provided plenty of fodder for that particular mill.
Unfortunately, we have been duped by our own party. The same people who rail against Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions, neglect to mention Obama’s own actions in that arena. Similarly, while Trump was wrong to ask Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter, it is still true that Hunter cashed in to the tune of $50,000 per month (!) with Burisma while his father was Vice President and was the Obama administration’s point man in Ukraine.
We are told that the economy is doing just fine, if not booming… but we look around and wonder WTF are they talking about? In most places, especially away from the coasts, the economy is anything but booming. In the meantime, Congress passed Trump’s huge tax cuts for the rich, and enacted a huge increase to the military budget that included billions more than Trump asked for, in a rare display of bipartisan unity. Who do these policies benefit? Certainly not the working class, of whatever color or nationality or immigration status or gender identity.
The Democrats long ago walked away from being the party of working people. Sure, there were reasons — for one, labor has a mixed record, historically, on racial issues. This was one factor the Democrats considered when they fled into the arms of the more socially liberal professional class (who not incidentally also had more money than the traditional Democratic base). But when the Democratic party deserted the working class, it deserted the black working class, the Hispanic working class, the immigrant working class… not just the white working class.
The Democratic party wants us to believe that when we elect women, or people of color, we will automatically effect positive change for the groups these public servants supposedly represent. But the evidence does not bear this out. When Obama bailed out the banks after the 2007-2997 crash, he left homeowners high and dry. In fact, during Obama’s term, black and Latino families in the US saw record declines in their wealth.
While I, along with millions of other voters, welcome the increasing diversity in our government, I refuse to be duped by the wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing candidates like Kamala Harris (who declined to parole nonviolent offenders, even when ordered to do so by a federal judge), and Pete Buttigieg (who has benefited from the legalization of gay marriage, but who avoids addressing LGBTQ issues even in front of a largely gay audience). Both the Republican and Democratic parties tap people of color, and women, to carry water for the elites. The take-home lesson could not be more clear: our votes should be based on policy positions, not on identity.
It is time for all of us to recognize another reality, and that reality has to do with class. When a handful of people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of the country, there is something wrong. When the richest country in the world cannot provide a decent education or health care or working infrastructure for its citizens, there is something wrong. When trade agreements that will affect us all are written in secret, by representatives of large corporations, with no representation for workers, there is something wrong.
The reality that the proponents of identity politics want to avoid talking about is this: the division that matters most is not right vs. left, but top vs. bottom.