OPINION: The Death of Identity Politics and the Failure of the Democratic Party Platform

A GU Qatar student's opinion on the evolution of Democratic rhetoric, and where it failed in comparison to Trump's second campaign.

On October 22nd, at a GU Qatar event entitled “Prospects for U.S. Democracy” I threw a zinger at the panel: polls showed a close race between Vice-President Harris and now President-elect Donald Trump, raising questions about her chances on Nov. 5 given the challenges she faced with key Democratic voter groups.

The data painted a challenging picture: Harris was losing support from black men, Latinos and union workers. Only single, college-educated women were standing firm. How, I asked, could she hold together a Democratic coalition that seemed to be fraying at every edge?

Dr. Jamil Scott, Professor of Government at Georgetown University, brushed off the question, insisting the polls were wrong and that minority voters would still flood the polls to support the first black woman running for president on a major party ticket.

Dr. Paul Musgrave, Professor of Government at Georgetown University in Qatar had a different take: Latino support, he argued, was slipping as these voters began prioritizing issues like economics and culture over Democratic calls for more permissive immigration policies. This shift, he claimed, reflects how Latinos are increasingly embracing an American identity that grows stronger with each generation.

Weeks later, and: Donald Trump just pulled off what no Republican has managed since 2004 by winning the popular vote. Even more surprising, he cobbled together a cross-racial, working-class coalition that propelled him to a landslide victory over Kamala Harris.

He is also poised to hold a slim majority in the House and a comfortable margin in the Senate. The question on everyone's mind could not be clearer: How on earth did Donald Trump—a convicted felon who lost the presidency just four years ago—manage to stage such a staggering comeback?

The Nov. 5 election was not just a bad day for the Democratic Party — it was an existential reckoning. For decades, they have wrapped themselves in the mantle of the working class, claiming unshakable loyalty from Black and Latino voters. But in 2024, that image has cracked wide open. Faced with the hard truths of unmet promises and sputtering coalitions, the Democrats now find themselves at a crossroads. Their rhetoric might still echo the glory days of FDR and LBJ, but the results on the ground are a stark reminder that voters are not buying what they are selling anymore.

The Republican win in this election can be explained by the failing appeal of identity politics and intersectionality in Democratic rhetoric. The identity politics of the modern Democratic party, which focuses on race, gender, sexuality, and systemic inequality, have obviously lost their appeal within and outside of the traditional Democratic base- the focus on systemic inequality, intersectional hierarchy, and sexual identity, have alienated voters from white working class men to religious minorities. This is a contrast to the post-2016 populist republicanism under President Trump, which champions individual freedom, national sovereignty, and a disdain for identity politics- all while casting itself as the last line of defense for traditional values and the so-called ‘forgotten man.’

In contemporary American society, concepts of intersectionality and identity have gained significant attention, particularly in academia, media, and politics. These frameworks often focus on categorizing individuals based on traits like race, gender, and sexuality, highlighting systemic inequalities but sometimes overshadowing personal responsibility and individuality. Democratic politicians, drawing on ideas like Michael Harrington’s “coalition of the dispossessed,” have proposed equity-driven policies intended to address historical disparities. While such efforts aim to promote fairness, they have also sparked debates about the balance between addressing group-based inequalities and recognizing individual complexities.

Barack Obama’s vision of America packed enough punch to land him a second term in 2012, even as independents tilted toward Mitt Romney. The secret sauce? A massive surge in minority turnout. Obama pulled in an astonishing 93% of Black voters, 71% of Latinos, and 73% of Asian Americans, according to exit polls—a coalition so solid it carried him across the finish line, despite losing independents to Romney by five points. The strategy comes straight out of The Emerging Democratic Majority, a 2002 book by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, which Democrats have treated as gospel since its release.

Intersectional hierarchy describes a framework in which societal privilege and disadvantage are distributed based on overlapping identities, such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Within this framework, straight white men are considered to experience the least systemic barriers, in comparison to members of other races and gender groups. There is ongoing debate and ambiguity about where groups such as white women, minority men, and gay white men might fit within this broader analysis, reflecting the complexity and nuance of these discussions.

Then came the 2016 presidential election, the result of which no one saw coming. Hillary Clinton, veteran of the Democratic establishment and self-styled heir to Obama’s coalition, launched her campaign with a heavy emphasis on her historic candidacy as the potential first female president.

Barack Obama’s ascent had become the blueprint for Democratic success in the modern era. His dazzling rhetoric and knack for rallying a diverse coalition turned ‘hope and change’ into a political juggernaut that crossed racial, generational, and partisan lines. The ‘Obama magic’ was not just about policy—it was a cultural phenomenon, a masterclass in how to win hearts and votes. Hillary Clinton, for all her credentials and experience, was left with the unenviable task of trying to bottle that lightning without the same charisma or magnetic appeal to hold it together.

She leaned into her identity as a woman, banking on it to energize voters who had originally rallied behind Obama’s promise of economic and social change. Meanwhile, surrogates such as Michelle Obama, Cory Booker, and John Legend fanned out across big urban areas in critical swing states—Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland—to fire up minority turnout, hoping to replicate the Obama magic.

But it did not work. Voter enthusiasm lagged, turnout dropped in key Democratic demographics (notably African American turnout, which decreased from 66.6% in 2012 to 59.6% in 2016) and Donald Trump—against all predictions—walked away with a shocking victory. In Wisconsin, Trump pulled off a Republican win for the first time since 1984—not by expanding the GOP base but by benefiting from a glaring drop in Democratic turnout. Even with slightly fewer votes than Romney managed in 2012, Trump flipped the state thanks to Clinton’s failure to rally key voter groups, particularly in urban centers like Milwaukee. It was a microcosm of the Democrats’ broader problem in 2016: they did not just lose votes—they lost the enthusiasm that had driven Obama’s coalition to victory.

Surely, they thought, it could not be that Hillary was a lackluster candidate who managed to unite Republican antagonism with leftist discontent. No, the narrative quickly took a different turn: American had experienced a “whitelash.” White, working-class men supposedly rebelled against the tide of multiculturalism, using their privilege to derail the election of America’s first female president. This storyline framed Trump’s victory as a retrograde reaction, not a rejection of Clinton’s politics.

Since then, the Democratic Party has gone all-in on a culture war narrative, casting Trump and his supporters as the living, breathing embodiments of every ‘ism’ in the book—racism, sexism, you name it—all to stoke the fires of outrage and keep the base fired up. The new mission was to mobilize an intersectional base through accusations and labels, and, for better or worse, what critics derisively call ‘woke politics’ took center stage.

This worldview, treating disparities as proof of discrimination, became gospel. Figures like Nikole Hannah-Jones emerged in Democratic circles, who originated the 1619 Project, which recast America’s founding not in 1776 under the banner of freedom but in 1619 under the shadow of slavery. Coupled with high-profile cultural moments—like corporate endorsements of social justice campaigns and celebrity-driven critiques of systemic inequities—the message was clear: the culture war was not going anywhere—it was just getting started.

So, what is the real issue with this kind of messaging? Let us put aside the moral mess it creates—where power, not virtue, defines one’s moral worth—and focus on the practical flaws.

First off, this perspective all but strips individual agency from minority voters and demonizes an entire block of voters: the white working class. This is especially ironic considering the Democrats used to be the party of the working man—a coalition forged in the fires of labor rights and economic justice. But somewhere along the way, the party’s priorities got hijacked by the ivory towers of elite universities and the cultural elite. The bread-and-butter issues that once brought working-class voters together, regardless of race, were shoved aside in favor of identity politics, leaving much of the white working class feeling abandoned, if not outright vilified, in the Democratic narrative.

Furthermore, some Democratic elites simply assume that the dispossessed coalition, a grab bag of minority groups, will loyally vote blue. Why? Because, as the thinking goes, only the Democratic Party champions ‘their’ issues: relaxed immigration policies, progressive policing and unrestricted abortion rights.

However, this perspective can be reductive. It assumes that all Latinos, for instance, think alike and back open borders, overlooking the fact that Latinos come from a variety of backgrounds, from Cuban-Americans to Mexican-Americans, with diverse perspectives and priorities.

Then there is the fact that groups like Latinos and Muslims tend to be more socially conservative, often worlds apart from the values of progressive elites in urban enclaves. Issues like gender theory in schools, for example, do not play well with socially conservative communities who see these discussions as antithetical to their core beliefs (see the protests in Dearborn in 2022 over the teaching of gender theory in schools).

For many minority voters, it looks like privileged Democratic elites in government, academia and the media are projecting their own values and priorities onto them, leaving their genuine concerns like jobs, economic security and quality education for their kids on the back burner.

And let us be honest: selling a vision of America as irredeemably oppressive and forever stamping out hope might resonate in liberal strongholds, but outside those bubbles? Not so much. In fact, this dour outlook only supercharged Trump’s cultural appeal, energizing not just his base but also swaying a fair share of independents. To many, the left’s rhetoric—whether it was tearing into foundational institutions or railing against historical power structures—came off not as reformist but as outright unpatriotic, a bridge too far for voters who still believed in the promise of America.

Americans are looking for effective governance and a unifying vision. Yet the Biden administration has often struggled to fulfill these expectations. We saw an expansionary fiscal policy, an immigration stance that allowed in approximately 7.2 million undocumented immigrants and a foreign policy portfolio that ended in two major wars and a botched Afghanistan pullout that left the country’s reputation in shambles.

So how did the Biden team, the Harris campaign and their loyal surrogates respond? They shrugged off inflation, dubbing it part of a ‘vibecession.’ They ignored the border crisis for years, opting to push a failed bipartisan border bill in their last year—which, even if it had passed, would have only rubber-stamped the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration. And they insisted on the idea that the Afghanistan withdrawal was “courageous and right”, despite that it was the single event that tanked their credibility in the first place.

When polarizing ideology is coupled with perceived mismanagement, the result is often voter rejection rather than support. Instead of offering any affirmative reason to vote for them, Democrats leaned hard into fear-mongering about Trump, painting him and his supporters as Nazis out to dismantle democracy. Most Americans did not buy it. Faced with pressing issues in their daily lives,they were not convinced by the scare tactics, and placed the blame for the events of the last four years with the Democratic establishment.

This shift has led to the unlikely reality of the Republican Party under Donald Trump cobbling together a multi-racial, working-class coalition—a development that would have been laughed off as fantasy not long ago. But the secret is not that Trump won over Latinos or other groups with hyper-targeted policies. It is that he struck a chord with working-class voters across racial lines. For these Americans, pocketbook issues like inflation, wages, and the rising cost of living mattered far more than lofty rhetoric about defending democracy or the identity politics dominating the left. Flaws and all, Trump came across as someone who understood their frustrations and was willing to fight for them—something they felt the other side was not offering.

According to the latest CBS News exit polls, Trump made significant gains across a range of demographics: up 27 points among Latino voters, 3 points among black voters, 13 points among young voters aged 18-29, 7 points with women, 14 points with voters earning less than $50,000 and 12 points with non-college-educated voters.

Harris only saw slight improvements from Biden’s 2020 performance in a few categories—up 3 points among black women, 1 point among white voters, 5 points among those 65 and older and 1 point among college graduates.

The new Trump coalition views the GOP as a party committed to addressing pressing issues like inflation and immigration. The shift is about not just policy, but also cultural tone.

Unlike the Democrats, whose rhetoric in recent years has skewed towards the lens of identity and oppression, Trump’s GOP offers a message that does not disparage white voters while treating minority groups as individuals rather than as blocks within a hierarchy of oppression.

Some academics, including Professor Tressie McMillian Cottom of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, insist that the takeaway from this election is to double down on identity politics, saying that Trump leaned into white identity (even though he lost a point among white voters).However, it is worth contrasting this idea with the seismic shifts in Latino-majority areas like Starr County, Texas, which swung from Clinton +60 in 2016 to Trump +16 in 2024.

Kamala Harris’s campaign represented the last two decades of mainstream Democratic thinking: divide voters into an oppressor/oppressed matrix, hoping to assemble a permanent majority coalition without actually addressing material issues such as rising inflation, stagnant wages, and housing affordability. She also failed to seriously differentiate herself from the incumbent administration, which had a 38.5% approval rating on the day before the election.

Contrast that approach with the messaging that once brought Democrats landslide wins in the Bill Clinton years (particularly the 1996 presidential election and the 1998 midterm elections). Back then, they leaned into a moderate, socially liberal approach, blending economic populism with neoclassical policies that appealed to the median voter. Clinton’s Democratic Party knew how to build a genuine big tent coalition without alienating people based on relative power dynamics, and they crafted policies people actually wanted. Here is the breakdown from 1996: Clinton pulled 44% of the white vote to Republican candidate Bob Dole’s 46%, dominated among African-Americans with 84% to Dole’s 12%, and crushed it with Hispanic voters at 73% versus Dole’s 21%. The Asian vote was closer, with Clinton at 44% and Dole at 48%. Add it all up, and Clinton walked away with an 8.2 million popular vote lead and a blowout Electoral College win of 379 to 159. Of course, this was also the year Ross Perot nabbed 8 million votes, proving that third-party candidates can complicate the math without really moving the needle.

In 2024, it is a different story. This Democratic Party bet big on intersectional credentials, unwavering support for abortion and a strategy of painting a politician who left office in 2021 as the real incumbent. But to voters, it all felt like window dressing—glossy rhetoric that dodged the real issues keeping them up at night: skyrocketing living costs, unchecked illegal immigration, and a sense that the country was veering off course economically, socially, and on the world stage. In short, it was a campaign tailored for the echo chamber of online liberals, not the American electorate.

That is why ads like ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you’ resonated so strongly with voters—shifting the needle 2.7 points toward Trump among those who saw it. The real impact of this election loss falls not just on Harris but also on the Democratic elite and the institutional supports behind her vision.

For people like Barack Obama, this election should be a wake-up call: his 2012 coalition, based on a delicate balance of minority support, young voters, and college-educated single white women, is a one-time deal, held together by his charisma, not a replicable strategy. It is time for figures like Barack Obama to follow George W. Bush’s example and fade gracefully into the background, leaving the Democratic Party to find its footing without the shadow of past leadership looming over every decision. The same goes for fixtures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, whose grip on the reins may be stifling the generational shift the party so desperately needs. If Democrats want to rebuild and reconnect with voters, they will need fresh faces with a vision that speaks to today’s realities, not a rehash of yesterday’s politics.

It is time that academics reckon with the fact that concepts like intersectionality, critical race theory and gender theory are more divisive than they might appear, both in theory and practice, and that they do not seem to hold wide appeal in the American electorate.Treating them as unassailable gospel may have the effect of alienating students and the public alike.

Since 2016, the Democratic establishment has floundered in its attempt to maintain legitimacy, unable to unify its fractious coalition or speak to the real concerns of voters. Adding insult to injury, the media has only made things worse, spinning narratives that feel increasingly out of touch with reality and driving independents and moderates further away from the party’s orbit.

The Democratic Party is teetering on the edge of a crucial decision. It can either get back to basics—focusing on bread-and-butter issues like jobs, wages, and the soaring cost of living—or continue chasing the mirage of post-materialist politics that preach to the choir while alienating everyone else. The 2024 election was not just a defeat; it was a flashing neon warning sign. High-minded rhetoric and identity-obsessed narratives cannot mask the absence of policies that actually improve lives. If Democrats do not change course, they are not just risking another election—they are gambling away the coalition that once made them the party of the people.

The choice is theirs—but so are the consequences.

Author Note:

I highly recommend reading Ruy Teixeira’s post-election analysis to better understand his original theory and how he has since critiqued his theory. He also wrote a book in 2022 with John Judis explaining how his initial theory failed to come to fruition.