Thread by @marcushjohnson

I don’t know how the “Democrats need to stop talking about race” takes still exist. The idea is that it alienates working class whites (sure). But how can they believe refusing to talk about race won’t provoke a backlash of poc/college educated? That we’ll just roll with it?

Its not an unusual or unpopular concept, you hear it from MY, from Shor, etc etc. I think the idea is totally bogus. They can perceive a white backlash to Dems talking about race, but funny how they cannot conceptualize a poc backlash for Dems dropping racial equity.

I also think they dramatically overstate the extent that the white working class can be won back in these highly polarized (because of race) times. Dems aren’t winning back Iowa and Ohio if they start saying Obama and CRT are bad.

Because of demographic changes and who the party represents, there has to be more talk about race over time. The white percentage of the population is shrinking, while the poc % of the Dem party is increasing. The result is more talk about lived experiences of poc.

People want to return to the depolarized, less racial era where Dems did well with wwc and could win in rural states in Sen races. Those years had a much higher white share of the electorate, so poc not as salient and both parties were more racially conservative.

Given the demographics of the country there is no going back. For better or worse, the Dem coalition is poc and college educated whites. And its a growing coalition relative to shrinking rural non college white GOP base.

Does it present challenges with rural states, sure. But its also the coalition that flipped GA and AZ in 2020 and turned VA into a conventionally blue state. Where the Prez margins in TX keep shrinking every four years. I’d much rather have the growing coalition going forward

And that’s why I think MY and Shor and all those guys are wrong. The outlook for the Dem Party is strong (if they win in 24 they’ll have won 6/9 last EC votes and 8/9 last pop votes). The white share of the population/electorate is shrinking over time, not growing.

As poc and college educateds age and move to the suburbs it will continually get harder for GOP to gerrymander states. Texas will eventually become purple as more college educateds move there for corporate jobs.

The power of the wwc voter, even though it is disproportionately stronger right now, shouldn’t be the only thing driving Dem politics. Democrats have to maintain their heterogeneous coalition and that means, as it becomes more diverse, talking more, not less, about race.

Biden talked more about white supremacy than probably any nominee ever. It flies in the face of what the “don’t talk about race, don’t alienate the wwc” crowd said. He ran against the modern George Wallace and won.

What if Biden refused to talk about race? What if he put a generic white guy on the ticket as VP? What if he says “No Trump has never done or said anything racist and we should stop talking about that altogether.” Does he do as well with Black voters? Does he win GA?

I think these people are underrating the extent to which Black support for the Dem Party is conditioned on the party’s support for fighting for racial minorities. There’s a reason Black voters didn’t support Bernie Sanders in 2016 or 2020. Can’t ignore us and expect to win. 🤷🏾‍♂️