If you have time to watch this talk by pollster Cornell Belcher, (assuming you have the stomach for this kind of analysis right now) I urge you to do it. Whether he’s right is beyond my ken, but I found it interesting.
David Neiwert, an expert on white identity movements, takes a stab at why that might have happened:
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: It’s one of the more popular lines of self-flagellation Democratic Party critics and strategists have taken in the wake of the disastrous 2024 election: Harris and her “identity politics” caused many voters, including minorities, to look elsewhere. 2/15
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: But as Tressie McMillan Cottom already observed, Harris in fact tended to deemphasize the racial aspects of her historic candidacy and worked hard to win over Republican voters—to little avail: 3/15 www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/o…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Nonetheless, the New York Times proclaimed that the results were about how “Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country”—thereby erasing Trump’s obvious and pronounced white identity politics, which were they key to his victory. 4/15 www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/u…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: The foundation of Trump’s entire campaign against Harris was racial identity politics. This was abundantly clear at the Republican National Convention, as the Washington Post reported at the time: 5/15 www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: He kicked it all off shortly after she had secured the Democratic nomination by falsely claiming that she switched back and forth between her Indian and Black heritages for her identity: 6/15
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Throughout the campaign, Trump’s MAGA cohort kept doubling down on white identity politics. A book emitted by the Claremont Institute built the narrative that white people are the main victims of racial discrimination now. 7/15 www.vox.com/politics/357…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Those ideas will reverberate throughout the coming Trump administration: 8/15
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: None of this is new for Donald Trump. He embraced white identity politics early in his 2015-16 campaign, a clear warning “that white consciousness can be a potent force in mass political behavior, and could foreshadow a rising white identity politics in the Age of Trump.” 9/15 shorturl.at/CjIfi
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Since then, we’ve witnessed how white identity politics has become the core animating feature of Republican politics, and how that is borne out at the ballot box. 10/15 fivethirtyeight.com/features/how…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Throughout the past campaign and indeed the preceding four years, we’ve been inundated with claims that Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures constitute “reverse racism.” And thanks to a right-compliant media, they’ve taken hold. 11/15 www.usatoday.com/story/money/…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Over at the Heritage Foundation—home of Trump’s Project 2025 team—they’ve been fulminating that DEI sessions are racially divisive. 12/15 www.heritage.org/civil-rights…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Meanwhile, Trump’s minions (including Elon Musk) repeatedly described Harris as a “DEI hire.” 13/15 www.heritage.org/progressivis…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: All of these “reverse racism” claims have a certain familiar ring to anyone who has studied the American extremist right for any length of time, as we became accustomed to hearing identical claims from the likes of David Duke and his neo-Nazi cohorts since the ‘70s. 14/15 fair.org/home/friendl…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: Indeed, what we call white identity politics now has gone by another name for most of its existence in American politics: white supremacism. Every aspect fundamentally originates in the racist worldview that ruled the U.S. for much of its early history. 15/15 news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor…
@davidneiwert.bsky.social: That history has been eradicated from our children’s education, doubly so now in the age of the DEI panic. Next: A brief history of white supremacy.