Identity politics isn’t dead — Democrats just need to do it better

As the campaign returns started coming in, a near constant refrain was hitting the punditry: identity politics is dead.

For the last decade, Democrats have talked about “identity politics” as a way to bring together diverse factions of the electorate to form an unbeatable majority-minority coalition that would help us hold the White House for decades and expand majorities in Congress. Certainly the last several elections have pointed out that this premise might be incorrect.

However, if you are going to write an obituary for identity politics, it should include an important footnote: It might not be dead, we just need to do it better.

{mosads}Campaigns cannot help but devolve into identity politics, and that isn’t something unique to 2016. 

Throughout the 20th century, we’ve always come up with caricatures of the American electorate to help us slice up voting blocs and talk about emerging trends. We’ve had the largely white, working class, “Reagan Democrats” of the Midwest who, despite being lifelong Democrats, defected to support President Reagan.

We’ve seen study after study on the “Catholic Vote” prior to the election of John F. Kennedy, where academics delved into voting trends of white-ethnic neighborhoods.

We even heralded the success of identity politics with the high performance of racial minorities in voting for President Obama.

As Democrats begin our process of introspection, we are presented with both a lesson and an opportunity. The lesson: Identity politics only works if people identify with the identity. The opportunity: Stronger identity politics could help us win in otherwise noncompetitive districts.

The old approach to identity politics typically focused on a siloed approach to racial minorities such as African Americans and Latinos, women, religious minorities, and the LGBT community. But in an increasingly complex world, we need to understand that people are multifaceted and may identify with more than one of these traditional categories.

In addition to that, they certainly might have a tiered approach to the multiple identities they assume — that is to say a Latino business owner might care more about small business tax credits than they do about immigration.

We cannot only talk to women about abortion. We cannot only talk to immigrants about immigration. We cannot only talk to the LGBT community about equality. While these issues are important pillars of the Democratic Party and are often priorities of the communities they represent, we cannot superimpose an identity onto a voter.

In short: the responsibility of deciding what issues matter rests with the voter, not the party.

Rather than just assuming the same groups will lead us to victory, we need to understand the culture of each local community and build coalitions that reflect that. Many in the Democratic party have operated under the assumption that “demography is destiny” and that the rising tides of minority populations will ensure our long term electoral success.

While this would certainly be true in “at-large” or “popular vote” elections, it is not a sound strategy if we are hoping to win in all corners of the country. In traditionally Republican districts, Democrats can build newer, stronger, coalitions made up of locally relevant communities.

All of this is not meant as a criticism of the Democratic party, but is instead meant to showcase an opportunity for the party to live up to our best selves. I have always believed that politics works best when more people are brought to the table.

The Democratic Party has a proud tradition of embodying this belief, and when we bring more people to the table, and make the process relevant to their lives, we too will win.

John McCarthy is a Democratic Strategist based in Washington, DC. Learn more at JohnWMcCarthy.com or follow him on twitter @JohnWMcCarthy

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.