The Power of Identity Politics

The power of identity politics is underappreciated by technocrats and policy wonks on the left. Among the biggest pitfalls we face is becoming tone deaf to the very people we represent. Two recent experiences highlight the problem.

An emotional controversy erupted at a recent statewide gathering of party activists, when African-American delegates objected to existing charter language allowing precinct meetings in private homes when public facilities are unavailable. (Finding free public meeting space has become problematic. Churches used as polling places have begun denying space for political meetings; public buildings are relying more on charging fees; precincts comprised of gated and cul-de-sac developments lack public facilities.)

African-Americans sensitized to discrimination viewed holding meetings in private homes as a threat to minority participation. They weren’t comfortable going to homes in white bedroom communities. The objections and their intensity were a surprise for white delegates. What whites saw as a matter of flexibility, some African-Americans saw as threatening and insensitive.

A Woodstock-era shopkeeper bent my ear about the outcome of the Democratic primaries. “I’m voting straight Republican,” she announced. “John McCain may be scary, but Barack Obama is scarier.”

After noting McCain’s notorious temper, she raised Obama’s lack of experience (a stock argument for Hillary Clinton supporters). The biggest complaint for “women of a certain age,” as she described herself and her friends, was that Hillary Clinton had been badly treated by the media and disrespected by the DNC.

She had other issues, of course, arguments widely circulated on the net by Clinton supporters since she suspended her campaign. Live conversations, however, have immediacy that even the most flaming blog comments lack. Online partisans so often attempt to maintain a pro forma pose of reasoned argument. Live ones do to. It’s just easier to see through the chaff in a live conversation. My shopkeeper’s core objection to Barack Obama was that he’s not Hillary Clinton.

Her intensity brought home how personally invested “women of a certain age” were in Clinton’s candidacy, a connection more about deep identity than policy. Ironically, while Clinton campaigned as tough enough to weather a brutalizing presidential campaign – as someone who can take a punch and punch back – supporters’ complaints that she was disrespected undercut that carefully crafted image in a way Clinton never would. In fact, it is they who felt disrespected, every bit as deeply as the African-American delegates felt threatened. That’s as much a matter of identity as policy and politics.

Missing those feelings – or misreading them – is a mistake strategists cannot afford. Persuading voters is more art than science, and far less rational a process than the wonks among us would like to admit. What is not being said is often more important. If we expect to win friends and influence voters, reading the message behind the message should be part of that process, because identity often trumps policy.

Like the frontiersman who can read trail signs city slickers cannot, strategists should cultivate the skills needed to read signals others miss. Issues are only part of the equation, and sometimes only the obvious signals overlying deeper identity. Our messaging should speak not just to issues, but identity as well.