Enough Identity Politics Already

Senator Bernie Sanders stunned just about everyone in politics on Tuesday when he won the Michigan Primary. It was his most significant victory to date in this primary process, and it gives him some desperately needed new life in the 2016 nomination fight. Even so, he trails by about 650 delegates, and Clinton is easily on track to win the nomination in Philadelphia next Summer. It seems fitting though to let Sanders have his moment of victory, after a hard-fought win.

Of course, that doesn't happen in politics, and the "hot takes" are coming out of everywhere. The easiest way to let me know that you don't know much about demographic politics is for you to refer to the "Latino vote" as though it is a monolithic block of voters- as though Cuban-Americans in Florida and Mexican-Americans in Texas have a lot in common besides (perhaps) language. Those groups certainly don't vote overly similar in Presidential races. The second easiest way is to refer to the "white male vote," as though that is a thing. There is very little resemblance in the politics of white men in Alabama and Tennessee and white men in Michigan or Massachusetts, both of whom are also quite different in their political interests. That is evident in their Presidential voting as well. No Democratic nominee is going to break 30% with white guys in the South. If they do that poorly in Michigan and Ohio though, they lost the election (note here: We've lost one of the last five popular votes for President, so obviously we're doing better with white men in the "Rust Belt"). So of course, I completely reject this logic:

As surprising as this result was, however, the exit polling fit right into the pattern that we’ve been seeing from other Democratic primaries. CNN shows that women and people of color support Clinton. Sanders eked out his win in Michigan on the backs of white male supporters, his most robust group of supporters across the country.

This isn’t unusual, either. Clinton is sweeping with people of color everywhere. And while Sanders has won with women in a couple of states — New Hampshire,Vermont — exit poll data shows that in most states where Sanders won, he didn’t win the majority of women.

Maybe getting white men while losing everyone else is enough. There’s no doubt that Tuesday’s results made the delegate race a little tighter and likely invigorated the Sanders campaign to keep on pushing. It’s not inconceivable that a few more wins like this could turn the tide for Sanders.

But if so, nominating a candidate whose base looks a lot more like the Republicans than the Democrats is a problem. The grim reality is that, in a general election, white men will vote for the Republican. Nominating a candidate whose strongest base of support comes from the same demographic that will never vote for a Democrat should give us all pause. It goes against all the lessons we learned from Barack Obama about coalition building and how Democrats win because of their diverse voting base.

Again, let's be clear here- Democrats will lose the white-male vote overall nationally, and most certainly in the South. No one disputes that. There are Democratic states where white men will not be any part of the winning coalition, because they vote Republican (Most of Virginia and North Carolina fit this mold, for instance). There are also states where white guys are, and have to be, part of the coalition. Swing-states across I-80 from Pennsylvania to Iowa require a competitive, if minority share of the white-man vote. These men are mostly moved by economics- which is why they have been pegged as "Reagan Democrats" at times, for their penchant for liking tax-cutters. Sanders making a case that he can win these men over with issues such as international trade and universal health care is a legitimate case that he is electable. Obviously, he needs more than that. In Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, he needs to show he can turn out African-Americans in numbers that rival President Obama or even Bill Clinton. In the rest of the country he needs to show he can do more than just win white men, as that's not a pathway to victory in Virginia, or in Florida, or in Nevada, for instance. It's also not something we should dismiss as meaningless- a lot of white men in Michigan have to vote for our nominee for the nominee to win the state, and the White House.

I've worked for a lot of diverse candidates. I worked for the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress in the history of New Jersey, the only Bosnian-American and Muslim woman in the Iowa House, Jewish candidates, African-American candidates, and of course, Hillary Clinton in the past. I believe in diversity. I don't believe in "forced" diversity through identity politics. I also don't know that I see any evidence that it really works politically. The most important thing we can do as progressives is win the 2016 election. Given the opposition, I don't think losing is an option. There is a theory out there, that if we nominate a white man, we will lose because of a lack of enthusiasm from our base. While I don't support Bernie Sanders, I don't buy into this theory. I don't necessarily buy that we are going to get Obama-esque turnout from our base from either candidate, but I don't think Bernie is necessarily in worse shape than Hillary there. I'm also not sure that his pathway to winning Michigan in the general is less legitimate than her's, just because he's relying on a group of voters we've been relying on to win every time since 1988. In short, I think this whole argument is outside of reality, and rests too much on theory. Sometimes we can overthink our identity politics leanings, particularly when we're unhappy with the results we get.