{"id":2617,"date":"2002-11-14T13:06:48","date_gmt":"2002-11-14T20:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/11\/identity-politics\/"},"modified":"2002-11-14T13:06:48","modified_gmt":"2002-11-14T20:06:48","slug":"identity-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/11\/14\/identity-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Identity politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tNancy Pelosi&#8217;s victory over Harold Ford for Minority Leader (it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/la-111402leaders_wr.story\">official<\/a> now) is interesting from the standpoint of identity politics, the chief motivator of the Democratic Party in recent years. Pelosi represents a demographic that Democrats desperately need to take back if they&#8217;re to be successful as a national party: white women. Clinton won with overwhelming white woman support (48-41 over Dole), but this evaporated in 2000, when they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/ELECTION\/2000\/results\/index.epolls.html\">went for Bush,<\/a> 49-48. But there&#8217;s a real question as to whether Pelosi has what it takes to appeal to white women outside the liberal enclave. If her main issues are going to be abortion, welfare, affirmative action, opposition to the war with Iraq, and high taxes, she loses, because white women are aligned with white men on these issues. If she stresses the economy (and has a real plan to improve it), the environment, education, and child care, she has a chance to win. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, African-Americans are going to be more and more disenchanted with a Democratic Party that takes them for granted, which depresses their turnout, and Latinos will be up in the air, probably representing the most important voting bloc in the near future. Bush has demonstrated an ability to reach out to Latinos, with friendly attitudes toward bi-lingual education, immigration, and religion, while all the Democrats have to offer is welfare and affirmative action, issues that alienate white people, including women. <\/p>\n<p>Identity politics is a tightrope, and I doubt Pelosi has the acumen to walk it successfully.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s victory over Harold Ford for Minority Leader (it&#8217;s official now) is interesting from the standpoint of identity politics, the chief motivator of the Democratic Party in recent years. Pelosi represents a demographic that Democrats desperately need to take back if they&#8217;re to be successful as a national party: white women. Clinton won with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/11\/14\/identity-politics\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Identity politics&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-Gd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}