Small tent politics.
If Democrats cannot talk about issues, then they will be the party of small tents and electoral failure.
"I want to be clear: Pete Buttigieg is a lying motherfucker. This is not a misunderstanding. . . . he—more than anyone on the goddamned planet—knows that everything he just said is a baldfaced lie."
Michael Harriot, The Root
"Lying motherfucker." Those are words that dispose of an argument, defining them as unacceptable on their face. They shut down debate.
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| Click: The Root |
Buttigieg got noticed for telephoning Harriot a few days after the article made its predictable splash. He then wrote a second article about the phone call. Central to the explanation for his article was that Buttigieg is white, his parents have good jobs teaching at Notre Dame, he got a great education, and he benefited from white privilege. He said Buttigieg could not understand the full black experience. The author described his own disadvantaged educational experiences and their challenges. That was the reality of the black experience.
Was Pete Buttigieg wrong? Or lying? In my judgement, no. His wasn't an attempt to make a universal description of the role of race in America. It was an observation about an element of it. It was called a "bald faced lie" because his critic said he lacked the standing to opine on it. (As, of course, do I, as a white observer of the dustup.)
This is another iteration of a phenomenon that is common around leftist discussions. Don't disagree, denounce. Don't challenge the argument, challenge the standing of the person to make it. It is what the current media environment wants, both cable news and social media. Buttigieg isn't just wrong; he is a lying MF.
Democrats are a coalition of identity groups and policy advocates. The coalition is leaky, but real. This complicated coalition may not nominate the candidate with the best arguments and the widest appeal. Complicating the search for a strong nominee is the incentive of each policy and identity group to preserve the purity of that group, and do so with the tactic of delegitimizing the arguments of people outside their group.
Only a black person can really understand and therefore represent blacks, and to say differently is a bald face lie.
Only a woman can really understand misogyny or advocate for reproductive rights and a man is appropriating that special form of identity victimhood if he presumes to speak about it.
Only a Latino, a gay, a lesbian, and so on. Only a person whose first priority is climate is legitimate on climate, and anything less than the most socialist position is a "right wing" sellout.
To be successful Democrats need to be a big tent party, but participants in the big tent condemn diversity for its failure to understand particularity. It pushes others out of the tent and it silences debate.
It also leaves it to Donald Trump to claim to be the candidate who speaks for all Americans.
5 comments:
I see this with many Bernie supporters and it frustrates me to no end.
“Democrats are a coalition of identity groups and policy advocates.“
That’s the problem.
My victimhood is bigger or worse than yours becomes a race to the bottom.
Same for me, i think Bernie should have stayed an Independent.
Now we have a bigger devide in the Democratic party.
There is plenty to pick a part and criticize about each of the candidates’ policies and platforms—without attacking their character—but at the same time we have to acknowledge that a candidate’s experience of life as an European American, African American, LatinX , Native American, sexual identity, growing up in poverty, growing up middle class, attending private schools, attending public schools, serving in the military and all the various human experiences will affect how a candidate perceives the world and will govern. It is natural that we want to vote for leaders who have shared our experience—who look and sound like us. The challenge for the Democrats is that we are one party of multiple tribes with vastly different backgrounds and experiences. We have a lot of work to do in listening to each other and finding a way to oust Trump and his enablers in Congress.
What tripped up the mayor was the bland assumption regarding the African-American experience. While he may have been trying to show his awareness of the problem of educational inequity, he misspoke by assigning skin color to the issue of economic disadvantage and its impact on families. While he was rightly questioned I think it was simply thoughtlessness, not deliberate pandering to racists.
It does highlight a persistent problem with moderate Democrats. They try to be fair minded but simply end up looking intellectually lazy and lacking the imagination see outside beyond their own experience, a Regressive trait. I think history may decide moderate Democrats in general may well be ultimately responsible for the current disaster, though I specifically blame Bill Clinton.
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