Wrote about the morally vacuous, strategically unsound (and also wrong!) anti-“woke”diagnosis everyone’s still sticking with, even in the midst of civil rights apocalypse.
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Never ever accept right wing framing. Trans became an issue because the right wanted it to become an issue and people fell for it. That isn’t to say there aren’t issues in that community, but I’ll be damned if I let the right dictate what that is.
the dems are saying they lost because of wokeness. this isnt right wing framing. this is democrats refusing to acknowledge their massive massive failures.
I did. The article gives examples of Dems who are eager to accept right wing framing. As I said, Republicans made things like trans people out to be way bigger issues than they really are. Dems agreeing with them is exactly what I said it was.
If your takeaway is “we’re not woke enough” than you have truly lost the plot (and the votes,permanently). What keep the blood dimmed tide at bay is having the maturity to move to the middle. Don’t feed the fire. Fight the gyre
You mean the Weimar Republic that had judges leftover from the monarchy who let Hitler off because his crimes were patriotic but regularly gave socialists the death sentence for less? That Weimar?
Yes, that Weimar, and if you think those judges weren’t sympathetic to Hitler’s cause, and cannot extrapolate what that tells you could happen here, you are lost. Human nature doesn’t change. Loony woke-ism and far right fascism are birds of a feather - y’all deserve each other.
Yeah, I know they supported Hitler. As would anyone who draws a moral parallel between the latest SJW cringe compilation and what fracking billionaire funded conservative influencers openly want to do to minorities.
Anecdotally, I know enough conservatives who voted for this current fiasco out of a knee jerk reaction to wokeism to strongly suspect the diagnosis is sound.
Seems that bearing some responsibility for bringing this disaster upon us makes you uncomfortable
Of course they were "motivated by wokeism" (or say they were) because anti-wokeism was the propaganda du jour, which everyone internalized. Just like it used to be "gays in the military", "government spending", "CRT", and now trans rights. We have to stop buying into their endless fake grievances.
Except those people have their own minds and their own votes. “Fake” or not, those grievances have consequences. Every slippery slope has a point of no return and if you insist on letting biological men play women’s sports, you’ve crossed it.
Republicans ran ads in Texas of Mack Beggs, ignoring that their rules are why he wrestled girls. In short, they are liars who should have been called liars.
"Those people" can't be appeased by any amount of supposed moderation. They'll always find a new (and, if necessary, absurd) justification to vote for the reactionary party. Remember when they cared deeply about "emails"? Your "slippery slope" theory is disproved by the last 20+ years.
This is a losing argument. I have no phobias, but the vast middle disagrees with your pov, and if you all cannot get over perceived semantic injuries you will never succeed. The Democratic Party needs to grow up.
This isn't a "perceived semantic injury" you bigoted fuck. This is the **exact same logic** to discriminate against trans people broadly, and that is not an exaggeration - Trump and co. are literally doing it right fucking now.
You're not an enlightened centrist. You're bigoted and spineless.
”I have no phobias” the bigot says while spouting nothing but phobia.
You are also victim blaming. ”If only those icky transes had had the decency not to demand to be seen as humans, we wouldn’t have had to keep dehumanizing them. It’s their fault for turning me into fascist.”
So you believe, great. But perhaps you should have enough respect for the vast swaths of independently minded centrists to not bring us all down with you.
Y’all are deranged. And if you cannot see your own role in this mess, you are hopelessly lost. By all means though, keep pushing further out into the fringe, I’m sure it will work out for you.
Trump is the reaction to decades of identity politics - It's obvious to anyone who lived through it. That's why these articles get flogged so hard every week - keep the Dems on the path of self destruction.
"Lived through it". Really? Identity politics is, at worst, vaguely annoying. If you're voting between 1) vaguely annoying and 2) racism, transphobia, and fascism, and you vote for the latter, then what you vote for is what you are. But admitting this is uncomfortable, so you frame it as a reaction.
By "lived through it" I mean I was an adult and have watched it all unfolding in real time - many younger people don't have reference points for how the world has been changing. I'm not implying I'm some battle-scarred survivor or whatever.
I've never voted for fascism, but yes identity politics and the constant disparagement of maleness and whiteness on the left have been a giant boon to the fascists that have always been lurking in our society. Division serves the worst elements of society and always has.
Exactly ... their definition of DEI has expanded so rapidly in the last month that it's clear it has little to do with wokeness, and everything to do with excluding all they have contempt for -- black people, brown people, queer people, trans people, women. Way beyond DEI to flat racism and erasure
The right had a fundamentally different ethical basis: they intuitively our explicitly believe that everyone has an ordained place in their social hierarchy and hate any attempt to disrupt that. Unions violate the same rules that queer people do for them.
TBH the “Latinx” thing is silly, because the people it refers to reject it. Better to ask people what they want to be called. But the election didn’t turn on that. What if the Dems had campaigned on things like universal healthcare, banning stock buy backs, busting up monopolies? They heeded donors
I don't believe the Democrats are this stupid; they're complicit. They're owned by the same wealthy interests who own the GOP. They were the designated fall guy, & rather than discuss the very real economic reasons they lost, they'll say it was DEI because they don't want to talk about economics. 🤷
Remember in 2013 when the Republican post-election autopsy came out and it concluded immigration and abortion were losing issuez for the GOP, and the RNC/politicians treated it like gospel?
Then 3 years later swept into the White House riding on more extreme immigration policiesand Roe is now gone
The problem we continue to see to this day is all this "DEI stuff" was always anathema to your average Senator or Democratic Party insider. They weren't violently opposed to it like the right, but they found it an annoying distraction forced on them.
Never bothered to get comfortable with it, to translate it from academic/HR jargon into easier slogans they could easily message and advocate for. Even be passionate about!
They kept looking at polls that "confirmed" they shouldn't be talking about things they clearly didn't want to talk about...
When one side rants about something night and day, and the other keeps trying to change the subject, it reads as an admission. "We can't fight on this because we're wrong."
Same thing happened with immigration. Republicans showed passion, Democrats ran away.
No expert but this strikes me as core truth. Dems should aggressively defend DEI (properly understood) not run from it. A majority of Americans surely believe in fairness and tolerance. That’s all we’re talking about.
Cons said *out loud* that the definitions of concepts like DEI and Woke were going to be perverted and then used to attack, I really don’t know why Dems went along with it 😡
I would agree with you, except then we got chuds like Moulton too quick to throw trans Americans under the bus rather than reflect on how *dems* could’ve done better.
Moulton can be ignored. He still thinks there's a common sense middle ground out there. He was just mouthing off yesterday and I couldn't change the channel fast enough.
Dems are going along with it because they're fine with the status quo. They prefer Trump to a progressive who would threaten their wealth and money streams
And seeking diversity / equity / inclusion can't be equated to preferential treatment. Seeking diversity/equity/inclusion is about casting a wide net for ability that meets the standards, not about a lowering of the standards that no one ever enjoys. Plus, diversity/equity/inclusion are not boring.
As those lamenting being devastated by a federal job cut, that they “did everything right”, maybe someday they’ll get it, that we are all in this together, and realize they are not a special class of human being.
'Wokeness' was just a way for the right wing to condense all their racist and bigoted tendencies down to be a buzzword. Now, Trump is using it to destroy vital programs that just help people. Helping people so they remain happy and healthy is 'woke' apparently.
I'm not sure of the point of the cartoon. Asylum is a legal process that was once celebrated in this country. Same with the protection of civil liberties and rights for everyone. Dismissing them as some radical ideology, like it seems this cartoon is doing, seems to be buying into horrid GOP framing
The Biden admin deported more immigrants than the Trump admin, so I’m not sure suggesting they caved to the progressive wing is accurate. In fact, the limiting factor appears to have been the number of judges available, and the GOP tanked the bill to add more.
Rebecca, thank you for your work as always. I remember when you came to my class with @peterbeinart.bsky.social at CUNY J when we were trying to confront this in 2017. Which was 75 years ago.
But might I ask for one refinement? When you first mention "DEI," it is in quotes and you discuss only the right's misinterpretation of it.
It would be *very* helpful for lower-info readers if, right at that spot, you clarified what the acronym *actually* stands for.
The problem with that analysis is that it lumps together three things that have different levels of support among Americans, who want equal opportunity for their daughters, but don't think males should be allowed to compete against females in sports.
I don't know that James Carville, Rahm Emmanuel, and Seth Moulton are Democratic leaders. They're more centrist media darlings. We'll see how the midterm strategy takes shape, but at this point, this narrative feels more like centrist media attempts to push the party right than actual party policy.
That's not really how that works.
I mean, they should tell them to shut up, but Seth Moulton had a failed presidential run and was part of a miserably failed attempt some years back to replace Pelosi as Speaker with someone further right. I see no evidence he's running the show.
The other two are just pundits.
Leadership is the people who are leading. I see no evidence they are. But they get pushed in center right publications like Politico and Axios because they want them to set the tone. Doesn't mean they are.
Funny nobody has actually defined woke. Kind of like porn. Don’t know what it is but I will show you when I see it. Seems to me it is just a way for people to get around stating they are just racist.
THANK YOU! If I lived in the US I think I would put up a Pride flag, 4 flags saying Diversity, Equality, Inclusion, Accessibility, and an American flag (to mess with their minds). But, seriously, can everyone just stop with blaming the current no humanity on too much humanity?
Disagree with some of this. Dowd, Carville, and Emanuel represent GOP friendly Dem "moderates" but are marginal within the party. What troubles me is the paralysis among the leadership that coalesced around the Biden administration. Perhaps there's a lack of faith as you say but it's confounding.
Melon bought the election. They’ve said it. There was no way spray tan Satan was gonna give up. Republicans own this because they did not impeach him the first time. He should’ve been impeached with the phone call to Ukraine.
Interesting piece, but I sense that the BTL comments by the user 'owlofminerva' get to the crux of the issue better. But even then, Wokeness has become such a sprawling umbrella term that it's difficult to agree on what either the 'crux' or 'the issue' even are
"Wokeness" is not a thing. I'm SO SICK of these types of things being co-opted with little to no pushback. CRT, woke, DEI, etc... What's next? A buddy of mine said if they want to bastardize woke then let's do it and make it stand for Whatever Offends Klansman Easiest (WOKE).
Conventional wisdom has been that Rs are the norm (the lie we are a center right nation) and dems need to “run to the center” to attempt to attract Rs who don’t vote for them anyway. The DEI scare gives Rs shorthand for you’re suffering because of “them.” Dems need to run on decency and services.
"My racist uncle's vote in TN was lost because the Dems spent too much time on the woke!" Ma'am I've got some news about your uncle you're not going to like.
I keep hearing this, and I just want to throttle people.
Don’t feel Dems lost because they focused on diversity. They lost because they didn’t focus on much else. Diversity should be the thread that runs through and weaves a comprehensive policy platform. It can’t be an end unto itself. They don’t own many other issues.
Dems had an economic message. Problem was nobody actually listened to it and there was no emotional appeal behind it to actually change things for the better for not only middle class, but poor people as well. People heard more about DJT's concepts of a plan than actual dem plans.
They didn't focus on diversity, unless you just can't get past the fact that the candidates were themselves more diverse. Harris bent over backwards to avoid talking about racism.
I'd argue that "woke" is to blame. Taking empathy, science, facts, history, equality, liberty, and justice, packaging them all up into a single derisive adjective to relentlessly assault decency and right action gave us the antithesis of all that is good - Trump.
Thinking about this article and the Moulton quote. Does Seth expect that his daughters drop trow, as AOC said, every time anyone calls their gender into question? His standard doesn't stop people who make these personal attacks, it permits them and encourages them. Every girl is a suspect.
Anyone who claims voting for Trump & GOP was about economy or to vote for an outsider is lying. It was misogyny & racism. Talked to hundreds of voters & when pressed-but he's a rapist who cheated everyone- it always comes down hate. Dems w/o a moral core & pretend there's a "big tent" doesn't help.
Kamala pretty much avoided social issues altogether and pivoted right/campaigned with Liz Cheney, didn't budge on Gaza. The #1 one cited issue for non participatory voters was Gaza. No trans or Palestinian representation at DNC. And people still argue "she went too far left"
She campaigned with Cheney because she ran a "Trump is crazy and corrupt" campaign. She didn't embrace Liz's politics, and it's silly to act like she did. Turns south it was the economy, stupid - again. So the misfire was not having an economic message beyond a few hastily cobbled cash giveaways.
And some Dems are now having to concede that the government is over regulated - to the point that there was precious little to show for the IRA, Infrastructure and CHIPS acts that they could actually run on years after those landmark bills were passed...
She made it quite clear she was in favor of a 2 state solution. Maybe not what you were looking for, but much much more than her opposition proposed and as we know, is doing catastrophically worse. Yet, she was still punished for it.
And then refused to lean into that and run the campaign she started to run before backing away from it. All that enthusiasm evaporating because she started listening to her Uber exec BIL, and white male centrists.
Great column. The right doesn’t oppose identity based politics (white Christian men are granted priority and structural power), just identity based protections for women and minorities, so it irritates me when these people talk about “identity” politics as separable from … politics.
Spot on. It’s not identity politics for a person to use the bathroom or have a job. It’s absolutely identity politics when they’re whining about “woke is forcing me to accept that people are people” gtfo with that 🚮
To take this a step further, those milquetoast establishment Libs, in the political class and the punditry, who wring their hands and crow about wokeness hurting the party? Those guys oppose protections for women and minorities too. We gotta deal with that if we're gonna get anywhere.
All the code words are opiates for a certain type of NYT subscriber who believes in a mythical center (that moves ever rightward) that will solve everything.
🎯. Real simple. Just like climate and biodiversity policy. The right policy settings for the time aren’t complicated. But you need to be clever and tenacious to not lose sight of them as a sea of 🐂 💩 is sent your way to that end.
You even get that exhausted feeling after you've seen the 100,000th comment trying to distill the current milieu into a single paragraph? Kinda like when you overhear kids at the coffee shop discovering an old philosophical debate.
This completely changed my mind about where the Dems went wrong. I thought they needed to don a Carhartt and yell about income inequality and ignore "identity politics". If that were the answer, Bernie would've just started his second term. Thank you!
Dems have been mismanaging their party for years, and so they decided it’s time to join the pile on of a tiny population of trans people who just want to live quiet lives with human rights and blame them for their defeat. Cowardly politicians.
Donald's appeal is literally down to the path of least resistance, like a lot of cons. He makes it sound like he'll relieve a burden & make it easier for everyone. The left doesn't make that second-santa promise of making things better without work or expense.
Voted 4 Harris/Waltz 4 many reasons…BUT…it was the least comfortable I have ever been voting for D. The hate from the far left must be addressed or the D’s will lose every single centrist voter. The far left is incredibly offensive. And if you answer this with an insult, you’re part of the problem.
More of this please! A country that values empathy, shows mercy and love for one another is worth fighting for. Historically the perpetrators of evil acts are blamed, not those who tried and failed to stop them. Let’s keep focused, fire Trump/Musk!
When I hear someone using the word "woke", I usually just assume they don't have the intellect to properly discuss the issues at hand... Or they know their policies aren't popular but also know their base responds to dog whistles better than actual policy discussions.
Maybe I missed it (I read the piece) but I didn't see a discussion of Trump's "they/them" ad. How can you say "wokeness" wasn't a factor in the election without pointing to the apparent success of that commercial?
IdPol can absolutely be a stumbling block in the hands of Woke-Lite "rad libs" who have historically taken relevant struggles and trivialized them through loudly misunderstanding and misinterpreting the message.
I'm not sure there's been a lot of talk about "woke-ness" losing the election, other than on the right. This feels like a strawman. Most of what I've heard blames it on a lackluster campaign, the third in a row which severely hurt the Dem brand. That and inflation.
Or maybe, just maybe, Biden torpedoed the entire thing by running again. His approval ratings were terrible, and so were hers, but when he finally did bow out and anointed her, the election was cooked. She was a terrible candidate and has always been a terrible candidate.
really excellent article, thank you! Totally agree these losses are “a failure to [not] get excessive enough.” A facet you allude to in your analysis & something that (as you mention) is inextricably tied to this need to focus on fairness (“ideas that are simply the right thing to do…”):
{cont’d}
the “ruling class [is] built on capitalist exploitation…”
One of the most overlooked Dem failures is the deep, dark corporate money that corrupts this ruling class — insisting on things that are “the right thing to do” probably should include insisting that Dems reject special interest money, etc.
Deserves to be widely disseminated- thank you for the thoughtful analysis. In GA, Republicans hammered trans issues and I saw no counter, anywhere, that schools are not transing your children. I was not allowed to use chosen pronouns or names in my school district.
Comments
They are history's greatest example of Liberal centrists capitulating to Fascism.
The middle? The gop has pulled the middle so far right that centrists = Eisenhower republicans.
I mean AOC & Bernie are slurred as "radical leftists."
Anecdotally, I know enough conservatives who voted for this current fiasco out of a knee jerk reaction to wokeism to strongly suspect the diagnosis is sound.
Seems that bearing some responsibility for bringing this disaster upon us makes you uncomfortable
You bring "nuh uh my dumbass friends voted like they were always gonna anyway, it must be teh woke"
You're not an enlightened centrist. You're bigoted and spineless.
You are also victim blaming. ”If only those icky transes had had the decency not to demand to be seen as humans, we wouldn’t have had to keep dehumanizing them. It’s their fault for turning me into fascist.”
Yeah you are a bigot
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/magazine/university-of-michigan-dei.html
Which is every day, for most people.
"Stop with the progress stuff!" does not prevent the Orc attacks. It just doesn't.
but you're right, the progress stuff does make a great excuse for some to proudly fly their freak flag of hate.
We're onto "Democracy with American Characteristics" now, I got it.
I'm not telling anyone to shut up.
Very sick of culture war caterwauling. Pronouns aren’t taking food out of people’s mouths.
Then 3 years later swept into the White House riding on more extreme immigration policiesand Roe is now gone
So they were always insincere about it...
They kept looking at polls that "confirmed" they shouldn't be talking about things they clearly didn't want to talk about...
Same thing happened with immigration. Republicans showed passion, Democrats ran away.
"You just want women in the kitchen, gay people in the closet and colored people at the back of the bus."
And if you think that's too icky to say out loud, it's time to step aside for someone new.
They didn't put a stop to it. Cause it's a "free country."
I just don't think the majority of people who become Democratic politicians these days are .. the kind of resolute heros some demand they be.
Most our historical heros had serious flaws that would disqualify them now.
My comment was addressed to dave finds out, who said Dems "went along with" new definitions of "DEI" and "woke".
I haven't been doing that.
None of my friends have been doing that.
I'm not responsible for what other fools do.
I also believe that is true. We are the majority.
If magafolk believed they were the majority, they wouldn't fight so hard to suppress our votes.
Republicans: “we did nothing wrong, the election was stolen, we should double down on every divisive issue again in 2024”
Democrats: “we did everything wrong, we are never going to win another election ever again unless we move to the right in 2028”
“and by the way…WOKE just means you give a damn about other people”
Seems like they are doing exactly that right now. Saying and doing jack shit while we hand everything over to DOGE; not wanting to offend fascists.
They tried to do damage control when it became an election year issue but unfortunately it was too late and here we are.
But might I ask for one refinement? When you first mention "DEI," it is in quotes and you discuss only the right's misinterpretation of it.
It would be *very* helpful for lower-info readers if, right at that spot, you clarified what the acronym *actually* stands for.
My dudes. Your failures don't stem from not throwing enough vulnerable people under the bus.
They stem from your refusal to fight the Pubes as though all our lives depended on it.
I mean, they should tell them to shut up, but Seth Moulton had a failed presidential run and was part of a miserably failed attempt some years back to replace Pelosi as Speaker with someone further right. I see no evidence he's running the show.
Leadership is the people who are leading. I see no evidence they are. But they get pushed in center right publications like Politico and Axios because they want them to set the tone. Doesn't mean they are.
but it was not “fear of woke”
it was white status fear👇🏼
& the D’s let donny & the Jim Crow GOP
aided by the complicit mainstream DC media
bully them into ditching white male incumbent👇🏼
& running a Black/Asian woman
https://www.instagram.com/isabelwilkerson/p/DB1rjF9yylr/?img_index=1
I keep hearing this, and I just want to throttle people.
You outfit King Donald’s crown & robe with this misdiagnosis.
So frustrating
We all agree that normal people should be protected; we radically differ who counts as normal.
(We also differ about what to do with people who might require accommodation, but that’s a different question.)
You (& I) think that protection should not stop there. You would protect everyone, even “non-normal” people.” Some people disagree with you there.
And they likely disagree with us about how broad a scope “normal” encompasses, in the 1st place.
1) I was talking about something more timeless.
2) There are other things going on in the current milieu, as well.
They've been convinced politics only happens when they don't like something or when something changes
Meanwhile, wanting your air to not be poisoned and your water to not have sewage in it is a biased political stance
https://www.planetcritical.com/p/cyber-security-experts-warn-election-hacked?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
Stay strong, everyone
🩷🤍🩵
Stay strong.. agree.
That's where the work begins.
Hey Democrats: have the courage of your convictions, people like it!
It is MAGAFOLK who ARE OBSESSED WITH IDENTITY POLITICS, because their demand that wasp cishet patriarchal identity is the only acceptable identity.
This moment defines who we are — or who we exclude.
{cont’d}
One of the most overlooked Dem failures is the deep, dark corporate money that corrupts this ruling class — insisting on things that are “the right thing to do” probably should include insisting that Dems reject special interest money, etc.