"where the key division is all about who rules rather than what is done with power"
This is why the identity politics discourse is so backwards: The GOP is increasingly built on pure identity politics, while the Democratic coalition is still built on policy transactionalism.
This is why the identity politics discourse is so backwards: The GOP is increasingly built on pure identity politics, while the Democratic coalition is still built on policy transactionalism.
https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1346470552660164613
Because Democrats have to mediate between different groups with different interests to hold their party together, they have to ground their politics in actual policy deliverables.
It's a disciplining internal structure, and there's no real analogue on the GOP side.
It's a disciplining internal structure, and there's no real analogue on the GOP side.
I make this argument in my book, but the thing we call "identity politics" is often most visible when it is weakest — when there's competition between different groups with different interests, the role of identity is obvious. When one group is hegemonic, it's often ignored.
That used to describe America — white, Christian men were hegemonic, and so their agenda was coded as just politics, not identity politics, because other groups weren't strong enough to show its specificity.
That's no longer true for America, but it is true inside the GOP. Because the GOP is pretty (though not entirely!) homogenous, it doesn't see its political claims as driven by identity, even though the Trump presidency was endlessly identity conflict triumphing over policy needs
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