Chris Hayes never saw it coming: the MSNBC host was banished from the Democratic Party just because he is white. He even said that was OK.

News of his permanent suspension was delivered by Danielle Moodie-Mills, host of a blog called "Woke AF." The AF does not stand for Air Force.

White people have to step aside, said Moodie-Mills, to ensure the future of the Democratic Party. She did not specifically say the dour Mr. Hayes had to commit media hara-kiri. She did not have to.

"What Democrats need to stop doing is pandering to the white working class," said Moodie-Mills, to an increasingly and plainly uncomfortable Chris Hayes. Chris has to know that if there is no place for working-class white Democrats, then there is certainly no place for working-class heroes, like him.

And for anyone keeping score in this never-ending, ever deepening game of identity politics, that also means Chris is taking a job that rightfully should be filled by a black person. A black woman would be better. A gay black woman, like Moodie-Mills, better still.

Moodie-Mills rejects the conventional wisdom that Democrats played the race card too much, too often in 2016. And that is why Trump won.

Turns out, sayeth Moodie-Mills, Democrats lost 2016 because did not play the race card enough, and they have to double down between now and the 2020 elections if they want to win:

What lost us the elections is constantly pandering to a class that isn't on your side. That isn't the future of this country. That isn't the future of the party. What black Americans have shown time and time again is that they are the backbone of the Democratic party, yet receive none of the investment from it.

By "investment" she means more free stuff. Or a high-paying gig on MSNBC.

Let us stop pretending that white women and white men are going to save us from ourselves. They are not going to. They are always going to vote with their whiteness. That's reality.

This "doubling down on race" strategy is hardly confined to the Chris Hayes digital love-fest. Politico also recently ran an article called "2020 Democrats are dramatically changing the way they talk about race: They're shrugging off fears of driving more white voters to Donald Trump."

Politico presented this "dump whitey" strategy as already something of a done deal. "Get ready to hear a lot more about intersectionality, allyship, inclusivity and POC" from Democrats running for office, predicted Alex Thompson, the sage who put that piece together.

Talking about race more than 2016? That's kind of hard to imagine for anyone who actually paid attention to the recent Democrat presidential primaries: black victimization and white racism was a major – if not the major – topic of discussion in every forum. Does no one at Politico remember the hallowed position Black Lives Matter occupied in the primaries and the convention itself? Does no one remember a hall full of convention delegates on their feet, chanting their support for the parents of black people who were killed by racist white cops and white people for no damn reason whatsoever? Does "hands up, don't shoot" ring a bell? How about Ferguson? Sound familiar?

It should. That's the only thing Democrats were talking about.

My own favorite was Hillary calling on white people to shut up and listen to black people. You might prefer the time when black people snatched the microphone at a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle and told thousands of liberals they were racists.

They did not even seem to mind. Neither did Bernie.

Or maybe your prefer the former governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley, groveling for forgiveness after saying the unsayable: that all lives matter, not just black lives. He was booed off the stage, reduced to promising Black Lives Matter hosts he would never make that mistake again.

This racial "woe is me/them" continued in a thousand different ways every day right up to the election. It's hard to see how they could do more.

But if doing more means black Democrats turning their backs on Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper and other white people who are quite proud of their status as ally, and branding them as enemies and losers, well, lots of people would even watch MSNBC to see that.

Colin Flaherty is the author of that scintillating bestseller Don't Make the Black Kids Angry, which, if he owned the New York Times, he would make sure is on the Times Best Christmas Present of the Year list. Until that day, you can check out Hayes's and Moodie-Mills's love-fest on MSNBC right here in one of his videos: "Chris Hayes Gets Branded on MSNBC."

Image: YouTube screen grab via The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.