The Democratic Party Is "in Crisis" Over "Identity Politics"

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Today’s front page story is about the Democratic party “grappling with how to stand up for diversity and defend marginalized groups that have come under assault from the White House, without allowing their party to be defined or marginalized by those fights.”

Oh, dear. I always read the story on the front page so that you don’t have to, and then I write about it. Today it was a choice between this story and writing about Elon Musk’s army of 19-year-old “young enforcers” who are carrying out a “blitz”, so I chose this one because the other one seems like a simple story of fascist enforcement. Something about the “z” in the word “blitz” just told me everything I needed to know about those young turds.

But when I read this other story, I had a bit of anxiety because as a left-ish leaning white guy of considerable mediocrity I realized that I was going to have to dive into the issues the story represents and, to an extent, opine on them, which is dangerous if you happen to work for a living for progressive causes in America. But, sure. I signed up to read the newspaper so that you don’t have to, and this comes with the territory.

Politics is complicated. Kamala Harris lost the election for a variety of reasons including angst on the right and legitimate concerns about the economy. She didn’t draw a hard enough line under her plans and those of the incumbent, Joe Biden. Many Americans also hate Black women and don’t understand why. Still, this isn’t the time for us all to gleefully go around trampling on trans people, or even passive-aggressively throwing them under the bus. And yet?

First things first. I believe that “the personal is political.” So I’m going to start there. I’m not saying any of this because I’m about to say anything horrific about trans people. I’m saying it because these issues are often framed in the abstract and actually, they’re about human beings who are in relationships with each other.

I am on friendly terms with two trans people. Not like “hang-out” friendly. But friendly. I worked with the first guy before he transitioned. In fact, I was given the job that he had also applied for as a communications director at a nonprofit in Oakland, California. At the time he was a Black woman, and outspoken, and unnerved people for talking about the intersection of our environmental issues with other issues including racism. I was hired for the job because I had more experience but also, probably, because I made the leadership team at the nonprofit less uncomfortable than he did. He has gone on to marry and have children and his instagram is hilarious. When I write about this issue I’m going to try to be mindful of how he might feel, reading what I have to say. The other guy I met last year and he works on poverty issues, trying to make sure poor people have enough money to live in America. He just left a job doing that for the Biden administration and I helped him write and place a piece about creating Chicago’s Universal Basic Income program in Newsweek. We get along well and I respect him. A friend of mine I met in Portland, Oregon just had a child with a trans dude and now reads this newsletter. Hi! 👋🏻 And another friend of mine just had “top surgery” and runs an agency for progressive causes. They (not “she”, you’ll note) and I helped a native American two-spirit (a.k.a “non-binary”) person through a bit of crisis communications last week after they faced some media backlash for buying up land that had been slated to build a federal prison.

None of my trans friends is now a teenage girl who wants to wrestle against your daughter’s High School team. They’re all working on important issues and I can see how their gender identities intersect with their efforts to bring about more justice in America. Since I honestly don’t love injustice, my inclination is to defend my friends. At the very least I don’t want to say anything that might make them, say, more likely to want to kill themselves. That’s where I come from on this stuff. From my understanding of the world through my real experiences and relationships with real people.

Meanwhile Democrats, the story by Shane Goldmacher says, are struggling with how to “marshal an effective response” to Trump’s “aggressive moves agains transgender rights, including calling gender care for trans youths ‘chemical and surgical mutilation,’ ordering transgender women in federal prisons to be transferred to men’s prisons and banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.”

Democrats are debating “when to push back, how to push back and what, exactly, to push back on,” he writes.

It must be hard having to fight against Donald Trump when you get paid to do it for a living. I get it. But the man has such a great instinct for attack — honed under his years as an “apprentice” to lawyer, Roy Cohn (a gay man who fought against AIDS medication at the federal level and in fact, ultimately died of the disease) — that he understands, for example, that once the attention is on him, he should make the most of the opportunity. I love how clear that is in this clip from the movie The Apprentice, where you can see him honing that approach:

It’s that training that, for example, had Trump falsely blame DEI for the helicopter crash over the Potomac river last week. It’s also what is behind his anti-trans executive orders. He is attacking people who it makes him more powerful to attack. Once you’ve thrown out taste and human decency, you’ll happily turn a tragedy into a talking point to bolster your own power. It demonstrates a brutal understanding of how this form of power works. It’s the same thinking that led to the holocaust.

My trans friend from Oakland went on to work for Rashad Robinson at Color of Change. He’s quoted in the piece, having recently quit after years of infighting, saying that Democrats need to “recalibrate their arguments about diversity to focus on demonstrating the practical benefits of having people of color in the room for key decisions.”

That’s probably easy for him to say, at this point. But my favorite quote in the article is from Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat “who is among those making the most full-throated case for D.E.I.”, according to the story:

Amen.

The story also quotes others who want to avoid the “minefield” of identity politics. It quotes a white, working class (so much identity!) Democratic strategist:

It also quotes Brianna Wu, a transgender woman and Democratic strategist (more identities!) who ran for Congress in 2018. She “said activists had overreached in recent years in pushing an extreme view of transgender rights. She blamed party leaders for embracing positions — like around participation in girls’ sports — that turn off voters, and said this had aided Republican efforts to roll back transgender rights more broadly.”

And that’s the key line for me. It’s easier in theory than in practice, I think, to draw the line between saying things that might make one’s trans friends more likely to want to kill themselves, and “babysitting the emotional state of activists.” That’s why this issue is so difficult and uncomfortable for Democrats. It’s why we tend to go quiet and want to change the subject to “the economy” or “business” when it’s brought up. I don’t know that the purpose of any party is solely to “win elections” at any cost.

Amongst my friends, I do sometimes have conversations about “the” “trans” “issue” where we might raise some discomfort. Another white, mediocre guy (so many identities!) friend of mine was saying the other day that he feels he can’t say what he thinks because he doesn’t want to “get canceled.” I said I didn’t think his skepticism about, say, transitioning adolescents, was all that unusual. I just said he was probably right that it’s best to err on the side of caution when it comes to bringing it up. Not just politically but out of sensitivity to the fact that it’s an emotive and fraught issue where people have very strong feelings on both sides. As a 13-year-old, I loved the band Guns’N’Roses, but I wasn’t allowed to get a “G’N’R” tattoo, and I’m glad. Meanwhile the U.K. has just banned puberty blockers for kids. I don’t think those issues are equivalent. But if you only scratch the surface of either without thinking first about the people you might need to help avoid killing themselves, sorry, “babysit,” then they come close. Throw in some disinformation and turn up the volume and you’ve got a perfect storm of conflict to exploit, politically.

The left is complicated like this. I have a friend whose Black boyfriend was thrown out of the Communist Party in Harlem in the 1970s. The communists were trying to unionize at a hospital and he wasn’t considered radical enough. The truth was probably more that he was a threat to the person who got him thrown out, and in practice, the left struggles with personalities, egos and infighting just as much as the right does. The far left and the center left are just as rife with them. Watch “The Death of Stalin”, and you see the Russian leader as a pathetic sociopath and his cronies as parasitic. Ideology doesn’t come into it when power is at stake. What I’m arguing for is to start with our mutual humanity and care for each other, and progress from there.

But speaking of power and ego James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist who “has been outspoken against what he has called the more ‘woke’ elements of his party”, is also quoted in the piece, saying “it was critical for Democrats to avoid a lecturing tone.”

I’ve interviewed James Carville. Until recently he was professing certainty that Kamala Harris would beat Donald Trump, so it shows how much he knows. What concerns me is that as a result of his vague attacks on ‘wokery’, we might stop nominating trans people to run for office. I think that’s a shame because trans people get to run for office, and win, or lose, in a democracy. That’s the glorious thing about a democracy. It’s a fair fight. The more trans people run and win, the better the chances that our politicians will think about those real people, and not some abstract version of them, before they open their mouths and say something hateful. It’s important.

Meanwhile the NYT magazine features a piece by Mireille Silcoff about how gen X women are having ‘the best sex’ than ever “in an era plagued by sex negativity.”

Among the most defining ongoing stories about sex in America today, she writes, “has been the drop-off in activity among Gen Z and Millennials.”

Woah there, Mirielle. I was with you at first, but let’s just read that last part again.

That sounds an awful like the decline in sex amongst teenagers is because we’re “babysitting the emotional state of activists.” It’s none of my business how people wish to conduct their private lives or where they look for “eroticism” to “flourish” but I’m not sure I’m ready to adopt a judgmental tone about the need for “personal and psychological safety” and “a desire to be immune from discomfort” amongst teenagers. In fact, I rather enjoy being around young people who are “obsessed” with these things. They tend to have fewer toxic assholes in their lives and later, move to Bushwick — which, as we all know, is going to remain solidly Democratic until the end of time.

Meanwhile, since we’re apparently attacking young people and blaming them for everything, I’m fascinated to consider the sex lives of Elon Musk’s young “Blitzers.” And so, we’ve come full circle. All that’s left for them is to put a “distinctive” logo in the circle and stick it up in the public square on a big red flag and we’ll be back to 1934. Perhaps that’s where their eroticism will really flourish?

Speaking of teenage angst, I can’t help wanting to dig out Rage Against The Machine, at this point, and stick on a bit of “Know Your Enemy.”

You’re welcome!

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and son.