Back in December, when it became evident that the “moderates” dominating the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were about to give President Biden what he wanted, a free ride to renomination in 2024, by replacing Iowa and New Hampshire with South Carolina (heart of the old Confederacy) and Georgia in the party’s primary/caucus catbird seats, a preemptive hue and cry arose from defensive defenders of the center-left’s political establishment.
The mere appearance of an op-ed column in the New York Times defending Iowa’s traditional first-to-the-post position (by Storm Lake [IA] Times Pilot editor Art Cullen) brought forth a slew of nasty commentary on the rural Midwest’s excessive whiteness and lack of demographic pluralism. A “diverse electorate” that better represented “Democratic voters and the country as a whole” (in the words of one outraged critic) was the overdue solution of the hour, despite the fact that six out of 10 Democrats remain White, according to the Pew Research Center. And so we were plunged forthwith into the raging waters of identity politics and the racial imperative.
We must, the argument goes, have a Democratic Party that “looks like America.” (For the record, the 2020 census says the US population is statistically 58% White, 19% Hispanic, 12% Black, 6% Asian, and 1% Native American.). So, how representative of the Democratic Party and the US population overall are South Carolina, whose primary is now set to displace Iowa’s first-in-the nation caucuses, and Georgia, whose presidential primary is also slated to be moved up? The short answer: not very much.
These states don’t more fairly represent underrepresented minority voters; in one sense, they overrepresent them. South Carolina is 25% Black, double the nation as a whole. Georgia is even more overrepresentative; its Black population, at 31%, is nearly triple the national figure. On the other hand, neither state has many Asians, Native Americans or Hispanics — about half as many proportionately in each case as the percentage for the total national population.
In fact, minorities are best represented in three Western states, California, Nevada and Hawaii. Whites make up less than half the total potential voters in these jurisdictions. So, by the DNC’s own logic, they should be the states moved up in the process. There’s a reason they haven’t been; they contain the wrong minorities. California is just 5.4% Black, Nevada 9.5% Black, and Hawaii 1.5% Black; the minorities that count out West are Hispanics or Latinos (of whatever racial designation), Asians, and Native Americans, which altogether outnumber Blacks by a wide margin.
But the members of the DNC are not demographers; they’re politicians, and they respond to political and (it will be seen) historical factors. Black Americans, upwards of 70% of whom routinely vote Democratic per recent survey data from Pew and the New York Times, feel they have an emotional and historical claim on Democratic loyalties dating back to the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. The Democrats won their allegiance by passing voting-rights legislation and later by enacting socioeconomic programs that contributed to expanding the Black middle class. A rising generation of Southern Black politicians returned the favor by allying themselves closely with the Democratic establishment under LBJ, Carter, the Clintons, and now Biden — all of them from below the Mason-Dixon line, home to the bulk of America’s Black population.
One result: The Democratic Party in the South is a Black party, much more than elsewhere around the country. Additionally, it’s a conservative party, especially in South Carolina, less so than the Southern GOP certainly, but more so than the Democratic Party in other regions. South Carolina’s unofficial party boss, Rep. James Clyburn, who arranged Biden’s state primary victory in 2020, is at best a centrist Democrat with no great love for Berniecrat-style progressives.
Placing this state, the most conservative in a conservative region, first on the momentum-building nomination schedule guarantees that aspiring Democratic presidential candidates coming out of the South with a lead will include no ideological successors to Bernie Sanders. The establishment “moderates” on the DNC have deliberately arranged for future nominees selected from the centrist wing of the party and for a continuing emphasis on social (read: racial), not economically populist, policies.
The Democratic Party of the 2020s seems destined to be a Black civil-rights party in the mold of the 1960s, dominated by militant organizations like Black Lives Matter, which will replace older, less radical groups, such as the NAACP. In the process, economic concerns about the nature of capitalism will be set aside in favor of the all-consuming distraction of race.
Even though White Democrats still make up 59% of the party’s registered voters, based on a Pew analysis for 2019 (versus 19% who are Black and 13% who are Hispanic), the concerns of Black Democrats will be considered paramount; they are part of the Democratic Party establishment in ways other minorities are not, a result of historical legacy, intense media focus, and a mastery of the inside political game. The election of Hakeem Jeffries, a Black centrist, as Nancy Pelosi’s successor was not an accident.
Moreover, the role of White social radicals from inside academia and the professions in keeping the Democrats’ Great Distraction front and center cannot be overemphasized. One example of their influence is the concept of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (or DEI), which is currently running rampant, especially on the campuses, imposing standards of acceptable “woke” behavior and language in the name of America’s so-called racial reckoning.
The link between DEI and the extremist academic left appears obvious in the era of identity politics. Besides calling for the usual public apologies for perceived racial transgressions, DEI and its advocates sponsor formal, oftentimes mandatory, retraining programs for racially insensitive or unaware Whites lacking proper social indoctrination. In line with this is the new linguistic gobbledygook enforced by, among others, the new “Associated Press Stylebook” — e.g. BIPOC (for Blacks, Indigenous and People of Color). There’s a broad tolerance in the race-conscious Democratic Party right now for this sort of soft authoritarianism. Liberal guilt: it’s a wondrous thing.
Meanwhile, lurking in wait ready to be unleashed nationwide is the hard authoritarianism of the Republican right personified by its knight in tarnished armor, Ron DeSantis. Should it migrate beyond its swampy Florida confines, a distinct possibility, the petty, counterproductive Democratic dogmatism that inspired it will pale by comparison.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2023
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