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Blaine's avatar

I generally enjoy your work, Keith, and don’t think you’re wrong that Democrats need to remain a big tent party, but this is so poorly researched and argued. For instance, you link to FAIRs website regarding Washington State’s use of racial preferences for the Covenant Homeownership Program and categorize it as “excluding white men from cheap homes.” If you did five seconds of research, you’d find that there are several first time homebuyer assistance programs in Washington State that do not have any sort of racial preferences (see, for instance, the Home Advantage Program) and that the Covenant Homeownership Program was established to specifically address government sanctioned housing discrimination against certain racial minority groups in Washington State (see https://wshfc.org/covenant/WSHFCWACHPFULLSTUDY32024.pdf#page14). To say that you mischaracterize the situation is an understatement. Similarly, you suggest that NY State Department of Health’s guidelines for prioritizing patient treatment of COVID-19 with Paxlovid and other anti-COVID-19 antivirals was “denying them [white men] access to vaccines” when the guidelines simply said race could be considered as one factor among many when determining who to prioritize for said treatment. Even if you disagree with those guidelines, that is not at all the same as “denying” white men vaccines.

But the bigger problem with this piece are two arguments you make:

First, you make it seem as though Democrats have abandoned their attempts to court white male voters altogether. The Harris-Walz Campaign (same with Hillary and Obama) did intentional, targeted outreach and advertising to white men throughout the campaign. You may argue that their attempts to sway or activate white male voters weren’t effective, and I’d certainly agree if you argued that those efforts weren’t the core focus or message of their campaign (although I don’t think that’s a bad thing given that white men haven’t been the base of the Democratic Party in many, many years), but that’s quite different than arguing that Democrats aren’t acting as if white men vote. Additionally, the examples you highlight of politicos excluding or vilifying white men (to the extent that they’re accurately conveyed in those articles) are from people who represent one wing of several within the Democratic Party. As a sidenote, given the headline and argument for this piece, it’s kind of rich to link to a story about Bowman… who lost to a white male Democrat in the primary.

Second, you state that Republicans deliberately avoided engaging in identity politics— a hilariously laughable proposition. Did you forget Trump claiming Harris suddenly became Black? Or his denigration of “Democrat run cities” as bastions of crime and chaos? Or his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, OH? Or his rhetoric that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of this country”? Or the ads claiming that Harris supported taxpayer covered surgeries for transgender people in prison? I refuse to believe that you’re so naive as to believe that those examples (and many others) do not constitute the deliberate engagement with identity politics. Their campaigns and rhetoric may not speak to your identity or mine, but they are absolutely crafted and deployed with the intent of angering, activating, motivating, etc. white voters, and white male voters in particular.

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Tracy Giddings's avatar

I believe you are right and Dems need to make room in the tent for low-income working class white me who are struggling to feel any of that 'white male privilege' when they can't both feed their family and pay the bills. They are not going to vote Dem as long as their struggles are dismissed and instead they are blamed as causing the struggles for everyone else. Maybe we should hone the message against the obviously privileged and oligarchy and welcome in the men who BE allies if they HAD allies.

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