There's an meme going around that Identity Politics was the reason why Roy Moore lost in Alabama.



But let’s give credit where credit is due and admit that the real reason Democrat Doug Jones will be heading to Washington to represent the people of Alabama is identity politics.

Without a doubt, Doug Jones wouldn't have won without a strong turnout in the black community, but that's a far cry from a victory for Identity Politics. If all it took was blacks turning out then Alabama wouldn't be a red state.



The long and the short of it is that the African-American vote last week was essentially identical to what it was when Obama lost the state to Mitt Romney by 23 points (61 percent to 38 percent). The slightly greater proportion of the vote, the slightly higher level of support for the Democrat, was not enough to account for Jones’ 1.5-point margin of victory.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the racial ledger, while the white proportion of the vote slipped a bit from 68 percent in 2012 to 66 percent in 2017, there was a huge difference in the partisan divide.

In 2012, 15 percent of white Alabamians voted for Obama. In 2017, 30 percent of them voted for Jones.

It's shameful how nearly two-thirds of white women voted for a pedophile (and someone who thinks women shouldn't be allowed to vote), simply because he has an 'R' before his name. So obviously this wasn't a victory for gender identity.

However, that isn't the lesson to be learned here.

Over and over again the news media emphasizes the black women vote. But the real lesson here is that there simply isn't enough black women in this country to make a difference beyond the margins.

The lesson to be learned is that Democrats needs both the black vote AND the white vote. The Dems aren't going to win by pitting one identity against another.

“The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I’ve got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

- Steve Bannon

Liberal's tight embrace of Identity Politics is bizarre for several reasons.

First and foremost, liberals are getting slaughtered by conservatives who are simply playing Identity Politics better than liberals.

Liberals not only refuse to see this obvious truth, but they also fail to learn from history.



The origins of identity politics in the late eighteenth century lie with the reactionary right. The original politics of identity was racism and nationalism, and it developed out of the counter-Enlightenment. These early critics of the Enlightenment opposed the idea of universal human values by stressing particularist values embodied in group identities. ‘There is no such thing as Man’, wrote the French arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre in his polemic against the concept of the Rights of Man. ‘I have seen Frenchmen, Italians and Russians… As for Man, I have never come across him anywhere.’

Where reactionaries adopted a particularist outlook, radicals challenging inequality and oppression did so in the name of universal rights. They insisted that equal rights belonged to all and that there existed a set of values and institutions, under which all humans best flourished. It was a universalism that fuelled the great radical movements that have shaped the modern world – from the almost-forgotten but hugely important Haitian Revolution of 1791, to the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the twentieth century to the movement for women’s suffrage to the battles for gay rights.

That is my biggest issue with Identity Politics: Identity Politics is divisive by its nature. Identity Politics is the opposite of solidarity.

How can one fight for a universal right and still believe in Identity Politics? You can't.

Historically, progressive politics has nothing to do with Identity Politics.



Despite this class bias, traditional liberal if not real progressive politics was class-based. What was once called the Old Left drew some of its inspiration from socialist theories of class struggle. Politics was about social justice, the battle between rich and poor, and it involved labor unions, the working class, and workers. It was about fighting for economic equality and democracy, seeing political unity in the shared struggle of class. In contrast, the New Left was the politics of the 1960s. It was born in the student campus movement against the Vietnam War, and for civil rights. The New Left was less about class than about identity politics, and it had stronger middle class roots than did the Old Left. The Old Left and New Left both sought to transform American politics, yet their visions of what a revolution would look like and what would emerge were different. The Old Left saw political progress rooted in class struggle and transformation that would eventually achieve liberation for oppressed groups, the New Left focused directly on the liberation of groups because of their social identity.

The Old Left is accused of ignoring racism and sexism, but that's mostly untrue. If you look at any old socialist group, they were always on the bleeding edge of diversity.

Liberals using Identity Politics to advance social justice is using a square peg on a round hole. The whole idea of social progress requires a majority of society.

Instead convincing a majority of the population it is in their best interests for this progress, Identity Politics liberals try to cobble together coalitions, and then depending on sympathy/empathy for the rest.

How often in history has that ever worked?

Rarely. Democracy is about self-interests. It's supposed to work that way.

So when sympathy/empathy doesn't cut it, liberals turn to Plan B.



They turn elections into moral judgments on voters and their attitudes toward certain groups. Why did many white workers who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 switch to Trump in 2016? Did they suddenly turn racist? I don’t think so.

After this year’s elections, Sen. Kamala Harris of California proclaimed that “Democrats won incredible victories by embracing our diversity and rejecting the politics of hate.” Bah.

Again, those triumphs reflected strong candidates and an electorate that in fact didn’t seem to place much importance on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual identity. Must we assume, meanwhile, that all who voted otherwise were consumed with hate? Come on. That’s emotional extortion, and it turns voters off.

It's undeniable that the liberals use of Identity Politics to cast moral judgements is the driving force of the radical right today.

So why can't liberals see this? Because condemning identity politics threatens the importance of its peddlers. These people have become the Useful Idiots of what they hate.



Identity politics and the New Left helped kill class politics and the Old Left. It unwittingly cooperated with conservatism to kill progressive politics. It helped divert attention away from labor unions which pushed for economic security, it drove a wedge between white working class and people of color by making the latter the bearers of white privilege. Fostering leftist identity politics produced the counter-movement of identity politics of the right, along with the resurgence of White Supremacy.