Here’s @ThePlumLineGS making a strong argument for why Democrats need to accept and set out to win the culture wars.
I’ll add some general thoughts on the idea that “kitchen table issues” can be separated from “culture war stuff,” to which too many Democrats still cling. 1/
I’ll add some general thoughts on the idea that “kitchen table issues” can be separated from “culture war stuff,” to which too many Democrats still cling. 1/
https://twitter.com/theplumlinegs/status/1414598004997230593
The column outlines many of the reasons why ignoring the culture wars dimension is doomed to fail, as a matter of political strategy, in a situation in which the GOP, aided by the rightwing propaganda machine, is guaranteed to succeed in making it a salient issue. 2/
Aside from the question of political strategy, many in the Democratic camp seem to be basing their insistence to focus solely on socio-economic and financial matters on an analytical error: the idea that those “kitchen table issues” can be separated from the culture wars. 3/
There’s a pervasive notion on the “Left” (broadly defined) that cultural issues are somehow secondary, that the conflicts surrounding them are ephemeral, that the culture wars are detached from the “real interests” of people. 4/
Such an unsophisticated materialist reading of U.S. politics is inadequate not only because it fails to take into account everything we know about the centrality of cultural issues in the activation of political identities and framing of political / electoral decisions. 5/
More importantly, the “kitchen table issues” narrative fails to grapple in earnest with how people define their “interests” beyond narrowly circumscribed economic matters, and how inextricably intertwined “cultural” and “kitchen table” issues are in a racial caste society. 6/
It’s often said that white working-class GOP voters, and Trump voters in particular, voted “against their interest.” I prefer to take these people seriously and assume they understand what they’re doing, and that many of them made white grievance politics their core interest. 7/
Not useful to deem such decisions “irrational.” In a racial caste system, in which your status is significantly determined by your Whiteness, it can absolutely be “rational” to vote for white grievance politics even though you might not get Medicaid expansion because of it. 8/
No use sanitizing our thinking about these issues by not acknowledging the importance of racial and cultural interests / anxieties and how they’re shaping our perception and understanding of the economic situation and material needs. 9/
“They are voting against their own interest” basically always means: Voting against certain narrowly defined economic interests. But group conflict - “How does this affect the status of my group relative to other groups?” - goes well beyond immediate material results. 10/
In the U.S. context, race has always played a crucial role in defining groups and group interests: Group conflict becomes, first and foremost, racial conflict. There’s a reluctance, however, to acknowledge that - a tendency to sanitize the discourse; hence “economic anxiety.” 11/
It’s not race OR class, of course, as those can never be fully separated. Important to note though: A lot of empirical evidence suggests that economic anxiety is downstream from racial/cultural anxiety - and that we need to think of it as racialized economic anxiety. 12/
In any case, how we think of the “interests” of people is enormously important. And “People always vote in line with their immediate kitchen table needs“ can’t be the answer – even a cursory look at U.S. history and politics should make that absolutely clear. 13/
Beware of approaches that focus on people being “misled” or “seduced.” I’d start from the assumption that people don’t vote against their interests, but may define those interests in ways we might not approve of. 14/
Which is why @ThePlumLineGS is right: It would be bad strategically for Democrats to ignore the culture wars and let Republicans frame the terms of debate unopposed – and it would also be implausible analytically. 15/
https://twitter.com/theplumlinegs/status/1414598004997230593
Don’t be fooled by the term “culture”: Conflicts over race and national identity are shaping – and have always shaped – American politics. These are conflicts over who gets to define what America should be, and who gets to be American; nothing ephemeral about that. /end
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