A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

14 July 2016

Today’s must read report on identity politics

I don’t like Hillary Clinton, but I’m voting for her because it would not be in my enlightened self-interest to suffer Donald Trump as president. Among white men with a college degree, that puts me in a minority. Writing in today’s New York Times, Thomas Edsall reports:

According to a recent Pew study, white non-Hispanic male college graduates support Trump over Hillary Clinton by 49 to 42 percent, even as she holds on to her overall lead.

Pew is not alone in its findings about college men. An ABC News/Washington Post survey in June gave Trump a 49–44 lead among white men who have completed four years of college.

Edsall wondered why this is so:

I asked pollsters and political scientists why Trump appeals to educated white men.

Howard Rosenthal, a political scientist at N.Y.U., sent a thoughtful reply to my inquiry:

The past 50 years have witnessed a very substantial redistribution from white males to minorities and women. I supported and now believe in the public policies that accomplished this redistribution. But redistribution it is.

The adoption of redistributive policies favoring women and minorities has, in Rosenthal’s unvarnished view, fundamentally changed the character of the political parties.

“The Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are engaged in identity politics. And the redistribution is not win-win,” Rosenthal wrote, adding that

identity politics is a matter of social justice that has had limited economic benefits for white males throughout the income distribution.

So even if college-educated whites are doing relatively well economically, the redistributive policies espoused by Clinton and the Democratic Party — Obamacare, affirmative action, more progressive taxation and expanded social insurance policies — have led Rosenthal to conclude that “in terms of pocketbook voting, I am not surprised that Trump draws support from many college educated white males.”

There’s more, and I encourage Democrats who wonder why Trump has such appeal for white men — that species Democrats derisively describe as “white males,” and sometimes even as “white male heterosexuals” — to read it.

Identity politics divides and balkanizes. It sets groups against each other on the basis of physical attributes instead bringing them together through shared values and goals. Democrats who believe that identity politics is inclusive, and who by their arguments and actions send the message that their political party is no party for white men, are making a terrible mistake.