Progressive Ideas Matter to Voters. So Why Do Democrats Fixate on the Identity of the Messenger?

http://theintercept.com/2019/01/07/democratic-ideology/
Date Written:  2019-01-07
Publisher:  The Intercept
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23222

There is a larger rhetorical trend toward divorcing voter preferences from ideology to focusing on identity. Wittingly or not, the effect is to undermine the obvious power of progressive ideas.

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The dominant lens through which Philips understands politics is demographic. He is the author of "Brown is the New White," a New York Times best-seller about how America's growing nonwhite population is the key to the Democratic Party's success. Phillips believes that Democrats should prioritize mobilizing nonvoting Americans of color (which it should). But he also argues that Democrats should not "waste money" appealing to white swing voters, derisively rejecting "conventional wisdom" that advocates for "empathy for the anxiety of moderate white voters." According to Philips, because there is a "ceiling" of white support, courting white voters offers diminishing returns.

Of course, the "demographics as destiny" strategy didn’t pan out in the 2016 presidential election. To the extent that there is a ceiling for white voters set by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton didn’t reach it - nabbing only 75 percent of the white voters who backed Obama. If she had matched Obama’s numbers among white voters, she would have won, making it difficult to argue that fortifying the Obama coalition would be a "waste."