Divisive identity politics are fading in favor of a shared American identity.
Some excerpts:
Many working-class voters left the Democratic party and voted for a billionaire reality-TV star in 2016 because he promised jobs and economic growth first, a new sense of united Americanism second, and an end to politically correct ethnic tribalism third.
Recent scholarly studies, here and abroad, have found that the aggressive effort to win government preferences for particular ethnic and religious minorities descends into “competitive victimhood.” In other words, such groups battle each other even more than they battle the majority.
In another paradox, immigrants came to and stayed in America because they saw it as preferable to their abandoned homelands. Romanticizing a forsaken culture that one has already decided offered far less opportunity and security than America is incoherent.
In 2020, Democratic candidates will certainly avoid stereotypical putdowns of “clingers,” “irredeemables,” and “deplorables.” These were past coded smears used by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to define supposedly illiberal conservative working-class voters, who were written off as too ignorant to know what was good for them and certainly were no longer needed in the Democratic party.
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