Loved this one.

"Notice how both of them stopped tweeting on this subject when black folk showed up..."

In the immediate aftermath of the election , "working class" was synonymous with "white", it remains so in discourse.. "Reaching out to the working class" when Clinton won people making less than 50k a year...so which working class people ? Just more of the same obsession with blaming "identity politics" for the moral and intellectual failings of voters.

So much bullshit.

If I wanted to start a thread about election strategies I would have ....This is not a thread about election strategies and how to reach out to bigoted voters, unless you are going to deny bigotry existed in last year's election.

if you think they need to talk to you before they go pontificating about what you were thinking. They think they are brilliant analysts; I think they are showing the arrogance of ignorance.

Too much of the analysis of the primaries and general election were done by white males who seem to view the results from inside a bubble. Do you follow Sarah Lerner? She has a great piece in Dame, "Oh, White Men With Your Never-ending Need to Dictate the Democratic Platform." Your comment about the paucity of profiles of Clinton supporters reminded me of this from her article:

"...Publications and politics tend to elevate elite white male voices. In the New York Times, Mark Lilla asserted that “the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.” Eight months later in the same outlet, Mark Penn and Andrew Stein called for Democrats to return to the center, claiming that “identity politics are creating a new social divide.” Even Bernie Sanders pointed to “politically correct rhetoric” as a reason why Trump won the election. In these men’s minds, the most significant barrier to future Democratic victories is marginalized groups refusing to back down from their full-throated demands for equal consideration.

"Perhaps most frustrating about this constantly recycled narrative around “identity politics” sinking the electoral chances of those on the left is that it is contradicted by data. The blatant bigotry that Trump voters rubber-stamped is often excused as “economic anxiety,” but exit polls showed that Hillary Clinton won both the under-$30,000 and $30,000 to $49,999 brackets. And for all the talk of Trump’s “populist” appeal, it was Clinton’s economic message that voters preferred in nearly every swing state (yes, including the decisive Rust Belt) and across the country." https://www.damemagazine.com/2017/07/18/oh-white-men-your-never-ending-need-dictate-democratic-platform

Last edited Tue Jul 18, 2017, 10:59 PM - Edit history (1)

It's all the perspective of a certain subset of while males who dominate mainstream media - It could only be a white male perspective that says , in response to the most bigoted campaign run by a white male candidate in recent memory, that the problem was the "Identity politics" of those he targeted.

Millions of words have been written or spouted over media about what happened in 2016, fingers have been pointed in various directions, demands are being made that we tear down the Democratic Party and rebuild, and much of it has been based on false premises.

Your OP is spot on: how can these (mostly) white male pundits speak with such certitude about the motivations of AAs when they have never talked with them much less actually listened to them, never accurately developed a profile of the issues and policies that were uppermost in their minds? How can (mostly) white males blame "identity politics" when the base of the Democratic Party is people of color and women, or state categorically that if only we had talked more about economic issues we would have won over trump voters when the evidence is clear that those voters were motivated by racism and bigotry? Sarah Lerner wrote about those who want to put aside Democrats' public policy discussions as "privileged people not wanting to think too critically about how privileged they might be." That I think is the rub.

Before the hammer comes down on me for bashing white males, I fully acknowledge and appreciate the white males who are allies in the struggles for Civil Rights and equality and the men of all colors who support women's rights; it's just that they are not the ones who usually get the face time.

Since Clinton won about three-quarters of black primary voters or maybe a little more (depending on the source) that means that about 12% of black adults voted for her in the Democratic primaries last year.

Last edited Fri Jul 21, 2017, 05:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Matt was responding to a tweet about black democrats.....furthermore the same pattern was reflected in the general election ( AA women in particular had a strong showing for Clinton) granted millennials didn't show up in the numbers they needed to ( that's a whole other thread)..... And you have to factor in voter suppression re General Election, so again.... Your point is?

...at 16% that's HIGHER than the overall Democratic turnout (why do we need to use the "adult" modifier?) of 14.8%.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/10/turnout-was-high-in-the-2016-primary-season-but-just-short-of-2008-record/

How people who insist we should listen to white Republicans can't bring themselves to listen to key Democratic groups, or Democrats at all.

It fits neatly into his little shoebox