A Democratic strategy to appease moderate voters is more woke than it appears.
There’s a legion of female military veterans running as Democrats this midterm cycle, and they outnumber female veteran Republican candidates an astounding 57 to 28. Having almost two Democratic candidates for every Republican in this demographic is perplexing. Veterans are a reliably Republican group, and the far left that finds a home in the Democratic Party is often the most critical of American military power. But the numbers are there, and the Democrats even have a marquee group of candidates dubbed the “Hell Cats” that represents the face of this new movement.
It’s smart politics to run a veteran for either party. The military is still one of the few U.S. institutions viewed positively by most voters, Republicans and Democrats alike. Democrats are hoping that candidates with military experience can brush aside voter worries about left-wing extremism. But the disproportionate female representation of the candidates sticks out oddly; it suggests that Democrats are still catering to the left-wing identitarian politics that they’re pretending to leave behind.
MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu summarized the party’s habit in a recent New York Times guest essay, in which the Democrats of this decade have embraced “a form of cultural politics that saw the world as imbued with oppressed-oppressor dynamics.”
The oppressor class is typically some combination of white, straight, male, wealthy, and able-bodied people who have ostensibly benefitted from a discriminatory system, and the oppressed class is non-white, female, queer, poor, and disabled, artificially held down by those in power. For who subscribe to this left-of-center worldview, America and its institutions, “the system,” are the ultimate manifestation of this oppression, at home and abroad. The military typically represents its apotheosis on a worldwide scale.
Military service, then, is usually a good proxy for patriotism, martial rigor, trust in American institutions, and a view of the world outside of the oppressor/oppressed framework. Touting this on the campaign trail enhances this characterization. Of course, I’m sure many of the candidates personally hold views like this, but whether or not they do is irrelevant to the greater partisan goal. Acemoglu’s characterization of the party’s collective worldview means that at some point, too much alignment with the oppressor class makes an oppressor. There exists a scale with a threshold where you can accumulate currency in either direction based on the relevant identity groups you belong to and the values you purport to have.
A female democrat whose military service provides her with “oppressor-adjacent” values wins in the Democratic framework because she can claim status in her historically marginalized group identity. For a male democrat, the formula wouldn’t work in the same way.
Observe JoAnna Mendoza, a prominent swing-district candidate for Arizona’s sixth congressional district and one of the Hell Cats. Her campaign website calls her “battle-tested” and “ready to serve.” The voter is reminded that her “20-year military career was defined by leadership, sacrifice, and service, marked by her role as a Marine Corps Drill Instructor, deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and leading the next generation of Marines,” where she “stood on the frontlines for our country.” She is the portrait of the willing patriot, strong and martial, victim to none. You should find the same glowing review of Marine life and service to the country in a male democratic candidate, but you won’t.
Take Graham Platner, one of the most prominent male veteran candidates of this cycle. Platner often framed his time in the Marines and its longstanding effects as victimizing, and he angrily blamed the military in resurfaced online comments. Observe his campaign page, which summarizes his experience:
Like many veterans, Graham struggled with undiagnosed PTSD and physical challenges that come from heavy infantry combat. . . . After four tours overseas, Graham was deeply disillusioned with America’s failed foreign policy and endless wars.
These are horrific realities of war. But he and Mendoza were both deployed into warscapes; compared with her campaign, his heavily emphasizes his personal weaknesses and his disillusionment with the American military establishment. The New Yorker ran with this angle in a July profile of Platner, who “presented a stark counterfactual” to America, “a country stubbornly attached to myths about the military’s positive transformative power.” All of this is in line with his self-characterization as an avatar of the downtrodden blue-collar man.
Though Platner ran on a progressive platform, a positive view of the military was never going to work for him. To be white and male while saying the exact same things as JoAnna Mendoza and the Hell Cats would create too many “oppressor” qualities in his profile.
How the narrative changes according to a candidate’s gender — and how much oppression is afforded to that identity — reveals that the governing Democratic strategy, or at least philosophy, still trades in the currency of oppression. Genuine love for America and appreciation for the virtue of strength are just as important as concern for the struggling. Such narrative flip-flopping — dependent solely on identity politics — is disingenuous.