Doubling down on grievance politics is a gift to Republicans.
Doubling down on grievance politics is a gift to Republicans.
P atrons aspiring to ride the Hulk rollercoaster at the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando are barraged by signs warning them to place anything not attached to their bodies in a locker next to the ride. Hats, sunglasses, and cellphones all have to be stored away, lest all that time spent upside down sends riders’ personal belongings into the moat below.
Nonetheless, a quick scan of the line to get on the coaster will reveal patrons wearing baseball hats and sunglasses while checking their cellphones, all of which they will have to surrender when they reach the metal detectors midway through the line.
Some people are entirely oblivious to signs, no matter how large or numerous. Whether they think they are the exception or believe they can wish their preferences into existence, they are simply immune to information.
That goes for those aspiring to leadership positions at the Democratic National Committee, who evidently can’t read a “HOLLYWOOD”-sized sign telling them to reverse course on identity politics.
Take Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who is currently running to lead the Democratic National Committee. This week, Wikler issued a statement on X offering a preview of his tenure as party leader. Savor every word:
We unite our coalition by making sure everyone’s at the table.
As DNC Chair, our leadership team will lift up our full coalition—with Black, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ, Youth, Interfaith, Ethnic, Rural, Veteran, and Disability representation.
If wokeism were measured in calories, Wikler’s statement would be a mountainous plate of cheddar and bacon nachos. For years, Democrats have been trying to cash in on the politics of grievance, micro-sorting voters into groups based on race, gender identity, sexual preference, and the like. And in flashing neon lights, voters in November told liberals they weren’t having any more of it.
As a white male, Wikler no doubt has to lean harder into his “inclusive” credentials if he aspires to lead a party obsessed with race. But it is also a bit odd that he immediately surged to the front of the pack of DNC candidates based on his résumé in Wisconsin, a state Donald Trump won twice in the last three elections.
Sure, Democrats and liberals did have quite a run in Wisconsin after Trump’s victory in the state in 2016, winning ten of the next eleven statewide races. (Until Ron Johnson snagged his Senate seat in 2022, the only win for the Right was a Supreme Court race in 2019.) However, under Wikler’s stewardship (also beginning in 2019), the state party has hemorrhaged voters in rural areas. While western Wisconsin once boasted Democratic congressmen like Ron Kind and David Obey, it has now become Trump country, swinging two elections in Trump’s favor. And it is likely the exact type of racial grievance politics that has turned off the state’s farmers and blue-collar workers.
So while nationwide publications praise Wikler as building a “winning machine,” his party’s presidential candidate just lost to a buffoonish Republican who tried to overturn the results of the previous election. Wikler’s credentials to lead a national party needing a turnaround are as plausible as Matt Gaetz’s credentials to lead the Department of Justice.
And it should not be encouraging to Democrats that Wikler appears to be all-in on the politics of division and grievance, especially after Americans have consistently rejected Democratic attempts to move votes with more acronyms. Do even the most ardent liberals know what AANHPI means? (For your personal edification, it is “Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.”) The length of the acronym for sexual identification seems to grow daily, as it is now up to LGBTQIA2S+. (That’s “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or gender expansive, queer and/or questioning, intersex, asexual, and two-spirit.” Plus.)
Simply put, you can’t be a governing party if everyday Americans need racial and gender Duolingo to understand what the hell you’re talking about.
Nonetheless, prominent Democrats believe the problem is with voters, not the product they are handing them.
New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, responded to a Republican bill preventing biological males from participating in women’s sports by saying that voters will be willing to come around when Democrats aren’t afraid to “throw a damn punch.”
Saying Democrats shouldn’t “cower in the face of tough issues,” Ocasio-Cortez advised her party to double down on unpopular issues.
“I think people are looking for strength,” she said. “And the reason why I think some folks in the Democratic Party have felt like trans issues are hot water, or immigration issues are hot water, is because they haven’t felt confident, or the ability to confidently throw a punch on solid ground that is persuasive and uniting people.”
“When we just show people how a bill like this doesn’t just hurt trans girls, which is a problem, it hurts all girls,” she went on. “It’s like letting foxes into the henhouse; when we call it out aggressively, we’re able to bring people together. . . . I think projecting strength attracts support.”
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie praised AOC for her statement, saying she “remains one of a handful of elected democrats who understand how politics operates.”
In other words, true Ocasio-Cortezism has never been tried.
But Americans recognize the constant obsession with race and gender has no endpoint — it just keeps creeping into ever more ridiculous corners while those who thrive on identifying new oppressed groups get a sugar rush. Every time a progressive utters the word “Latinx,” four Hispanic voters shift to the Republicans.
If Ben Wikler takes over and offers more of the same woke rhetoric that gave America a second Donald Trump term, voters will treat Democrats with the revulsion typically reserved for a second-hand mattress. The most important role the next DNC chair could play would be to convince their ideological allies at universities and in the media to knock off accusing people of “ableism” and “fatphobia” and not being “inclusive” enough and other nonsense. Doing so might help them re-earn the trust of young white males, who see the entire Democratic messaging system as existing to put them down.
Until then, Democrats will continue to carve up their voters into infinitesimally tiny groups bound only by aggrievement. The constant division will continue until they find groups so small that they are barely perceptible — like elected Democrats.