David Cormack
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The identity post mortems
🕑 Added 2024-11-11 00:10:25 +0000 UTCThat US election was a shocker eh? All the vibes, all the mood, all the media, it all pointed to a Harris win. Some of the polling did too, but it really gave the Dems a Romney-2012 experience where he felt it in his bones that he was going to win.
I haven't really read any of the longer-form "why the Dems lost" pieces because I think it's way too early to be able to analyse that correctly, but what I have seen popping up a lot from pundits, reporters, and folks online, is this idea that the Dems went too hard on identity politics; that they focused too much on human rights for the trans community, that going so hard on abortion, a predominantly women's issue, was a mistake because it alienated young men. And so they need to bro it up and go on Joe Rogan. They need to stop being so goddamn woke.
This idea is fucking terrible. If you are a leftist in any way, then you cannot in good conscience argue for the above. It would help if you articulated how providing proper human rights, equity and outcomes for minority groups is good for the collective of workers. That class consciousness cannot exist without intersectionality. The fight for the rights of women, the rights of the trans community, the rights of anyone from the rainbow community, and the rights of people of colour all has to be fought and won. It's about acknowledging the differences in the way that others experience the world to just white men. And then it's articulating a world where you can say, "Hey, white bros, your inability to afford groceries, buy a house, pay the rent, is experienced more by other minority groups than it is the capital-owning classes. If you fight for the rights of them, you also fight for the rights of you, minority groups are not hurting you".
I think one of the most significant barriers to this use of class warfare is that the right wing is always going to be the party of capital-owning classes. And so many of us, perhaps even the majority of us workers, aspire to be capital owners. We want what they have. This means so many vote as if tomorrow they'll wake up flushed with capital—the temporarily embarrassed billionaire. But my guys, your billionaire friends are not going to help you. They want your vote and will discard you until the next election rolls around.
There are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. And so we gather all of us who are hurt by capitalism and inequality - in all of its guises - and work to improve it for every one of us. We don't discard the fight for the rights of minorities because we think it hurts us electorally. That is such a morally bankrupt way to look at it. We fight alongside them, we fight for them, we fight to win for them. They are more my kin than Elon fucking Musk or Jeff Bezos ever will be.
So if you think the Democrats lost cos they went too woke, or the same here in NZ, that National/Act/NZFirst won because they courted the bigot vote then you are just further proving the adage that you scratch a centrist and find a fascist underneath.
Does nobody remember "they are us"?
