The Democratic Party and its candidates did well in the 2018 midterm elections, leading them to believe they would similarly do as well in the presidential election of 2020. While they managed to defeat Trump, they did worse, sometimes much worse, than they expected. The Democrats need to figure out exactly what happened if they wish to improve moving forward. Thomas Chatterton Williams tries to come to their aid in the article Shades of Blue in Harper’s Magazine.
Williams warns the Democrats that they must realize that the groups they depend on for electoral success are not monolithic entities. Blacks, Latinos, and other minority groups have diversity in their needs and interests and the politicians must recognize this and treat these people as individuals not as a homogeneous mass. The party can revel in its victories in Arizona (thanks to Latinos) and in Georgia (thanks to Blacks). However, these victories must be balanced by disappointing results in the critical states of Texas and Florida where the needed minority votes never arrived. They should be particularly troubled by the fact that the percentage of Blacks and Latinos who voted for Trump actually increased in 2020 over that in 2016. And if that is not bad enough, the fraction of Asian, white women, and LGBT voters for Trump also increased.
Williams identifies a well-educated, somewhat wealthy white elite as the core movers in the Democratic Party universe.
“The lives of progressive, college-educated, predominantly white ‘coastal elites’ have become far removed from those of white Republicans, but more significantly from those of the nonwhite voters their party depends on to remain electorally viable—and whose validation lends them an air of virtuousness.”
“Fashionable narratives about the Democratic coalition and its members’ goals and ambitions can efface what many minorities think is in their best interest. Such misreadings are not just insensitive but dangerous. They can lead Democrats to pursue ill-conceived, poorly articulated policies that backfire to the benefit of conservatives, or worse, inflict harm on vulnerable communities.”
Williams presented two examples of the Democrats’ cluelessness in dealing with people they presume to represent. Party personalities have taken to using the term Latinx to avoid the need for a gender specific ending believing this is politically correct in their world and thus appropriate for all. Choosing a new term and applying it to all Latinos can also be seen as lumping together the diverse cultures one finds in California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, and New York—not the appropriate strategy for winning votes.
“In fact, not only is ‘Latinx’ decidedly not the term most Latinos choose, but a significant number—about three fourths of the Latino population—have never even heard of it. A bilingual national survey conducted in December 2019 by the Pew Research Center found that a mere 3 percent of Latinos use the descriptor. And yet, the ‘new, gender-neutral, pan-ethnic label, Latinx, has emerged as an alternative,’ the report observes. It is what prominent progressives—from Elizabeth Warren to Ibram X. Kendi—insist on using to describe a community to which they do not themselves belong. During the Democratic primaries, Senator Warren tweeted, ‘When I become president, Latinx families will have a champion in the White House’.”
Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman from Arizona, had this comment about the use of that term.
“’When [Latinx] is used I feel someone is taking away some of my culture,’ Gallego wrote…’Instead of trying to understand my culture they decided to change it to fit their perspective’.”
The passionate response of Blacks to police killings led to taunts of “defund the police” or “abolish the police.” These phrases were picked up and used by party leaders without contemplating what the response might be by the entire Black community.
“Like the niche semantic preference for ‘Latinx,’ but with far more direct and dire consequences, viral slogans such as ‘abolish the police’—created by people of color, but powerfully amplified by whites situated at a considerable remove—have been foisted on black communities that have a far more equivocal relationship with policing than is often acknowledged.”
Black families live in communities with criminals who are black. In some areas the threat from these criminals is constant, not episodic. They may not like the police and their methods, but they realize that they need them.
“…countless black Americans are forced to confront the harsh inadequacy of stark rhetorical binaries. They are overpoliced and underpoliced at the same time. Outside the brutal videotaped killings by police that fill our news feeds, or the numbing grind of quotidian degradations like stop-and-frisk, it is underpolicing that causes the most harm.”
Williams, a black man, provides this perspective on those who might not be seduced by Democratic politicians and their mission to support minority groups.
“Americans of all backgrounds—from Tea Party whites who despise the Obamacare they’ve come to depend on, to Latinos and Asians of immigrant backgrounds who support a strongman who scapegoats foreigners as parasitic invaders—are united by one trait: no one wants to see himself as a hapless victim who must be protected from higher-caste oppressors and invisible systemic forces. In my own experience, whenever I’ve tried to make the point that racial groups are not and cannot possibly be monolithic, I’ve been accused (often by white progressives) of proximity to whiteness, of having lost touch with authentic marginalized reality. In that case, there seem to be significant numbers of black, Latino, and Asian voters who have lost touch alongside me.”
The Democratic mission is an important one. It must be done better if it is to succeed.
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