Is Wokeness ‘Kryptonite for Democrats’?
As Republicans well know, Democrats are divided on a host of volatile racial, cultural and sexual issues.
Take a look at the polls.
In 2019, the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group commissioned a survey asking for agreement or disagreement with the statement: “There are only two genders, male and female.”
In the full sample, a decisive majority, 59 percent agreed, including 43 percent who “strongly agreed,” 32 percent disagreed and 9 percent who said they weren’t sure. Among Republicans, it was no contest, 78 percent agreed and 16 percent disagreed. Independents mirrored the whole sample.
Democrats were split: a plurality, 48 percent, disagreed, and 44 percent agreed.
The survey itself arguably embodied what critics might call “transphobic framing” — transgender issues are among the most polarizing in contemporary politics and much contemporary cultural conflict in fact stems from framing disputes.
That's one losing issue if your counting!
Or take the public’s view of the “defund the police” movement that gained momentum after the murder of George Floyd a year ago.
A March 1-2 USA Today/Ipsos Poll found that voters were opposed to defunding the police 58-18, with the strongest opposition among whites (67 percent to 13 percent support, the rest undecided) and Republicans (84 to 4 percent), while a plurality of Democrats were opposed (at 39 to 34), which was also true among African Americans (37 to 28).
A second losing issue. I'm suggesting that if Democrats can't get 70% or better on these issues, they lose the issue when Republicans do achieve those numbers just in case you wondered what I was basing my opinion on.
A Harvard/Harris survey in February asked, “Do you think there is a growing cancel culture that is a threat to our freedom or not?” By 64-36, a majority of voters said they thought there was. Republicans see a threat by 80-20; independents by 64-34, but Democrats were split, with a slight majority, 52-48, saying they do not see a threat. This basic pattern is observable across a number of issues.
That makes 3 losing issues. All connected to "wokeness".
Although centrist Democrats make up a majority of the party in the polls I cited above, the fact that a substantial minority of Democrats takes the more extreme stance allows Republicans to portray the Democratic Party as very much in thrall to its more “radical” wing.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U., argued in an email that the policies the Democratic Party’s left wing is pushing are an anchor weighing down the party’s prospects:
Wokeness is kryptonite for the Democrats. Most people hate it, other than the progressive activists. If you just look at Americans’ policy preferences, Dems should be winning big majorities. But we have strong negative partisanship, and when people are faced with a party that seems to want to defund the police and rename schools, rather than open them, all while crime is rising and kids’ welfare is falling, the left flank of the party is just so easy for Republicans to run against.In much gentler terms, Barack Obama has voiced analogous concerns. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” Obama famously declared in October 2019:
The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you.James Carville, the top strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, was succinct in his assessment. He recently told Sean Illing, a writer at Vox:
Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.“Why not?” Illing asked.
“Because they’ll get clobbered.”
Carville’s answer provides insight into the question of whether, if the left wing of the Democratic Party is backing many policies that are unacceptable to a majority of voters and if some of those policies appear to violate constitutional protections of free speech and the rights of the accused, why hasn’t there been more pushback in both politics and academia?
And we didn't even get to immigration and teaching CRT, two more losing issues. If jobs don't show up and Jimmy Carter type inflation returns before 2022?
"Turn out the lights, the party's over" to quote a well know and respected philosopher Don Meredith!!!!!
