Democrats: The Party Of Pander

How identity pandering of the 2020 Democrat Primaries pushed me toward leaving the Democrat party

Partisanship is blinding and it made me blind to the strategy of identity manipulation that my former party chose to enact for votes. When I first gained an interest in politics, the Democrats in my eyes were the party of liberal values and treating people with dignity no matter what they look like.

However, over the years, they became increasingly enamored with the idea of appealing to various identity blocs. Instead of selling a good policy to attract voters, they sold good pandering to appeal to the lowest common denominator. My blindness was retracting and I couldn’t unsee what was becoming more commonplace.

The party of true liberalism whored itself out by becoming the party of pandering.

Of course, politicians pander for votes during election season when they go to a diner they wouldn’t be caught dead in if cameras weren’t there. No one really believes that millionaire politicians, who spend their days in D.C. being treated like Kings and Queens, really want to chow down with farmers and mechanics at an Iowa fair.

But there is something objectively different about pandering to identity groups. Iowans in a particular area may have similar concerns and requirements or cultural attitudes about government policies but how do you appeal to millions of “blacks”, “Hispanics” or “women” nationwide?

To believe you’re appealing to the majority of any of those demographics, you must believe in the validity of reductionist thinking and you can’t lose sleep over perpetuating stereotypes.

The largest problem with identity politics is that it doesn’t allow for cross-over concerns, otherwise what’s the point in having demographic-oriented policy advocacy?

Are there issues that only affect one particular demographic? Sure, I won’t deny that. However, Democrat politicians have built entire platforms on segregative policy visions depending on what you look like, who you like to have sex with, and what’s between your legs.

If you’re black, you care about prison reform and reparations; nothing more.

If you’re Hispanic, you care about immigration; nothing more.

If you’re a woman, you care about abortion access; nothing more.

The list goes on…

Leading up to the 2020 Democrat primaries, I watched the coverage and debates to see what each of these different politicians had to offer. As every day went by and a new magnifying glass went onto a different leading candidate seemingly every week, I realized that the substance of what they were discussing wasn’t there.

Even worse, I watched people who had legitimate power in this country as senators, mayors, and congressmen transform into pandering identity salesmen and saleswomen, ready to say whatever it took to appeal to your immutable characteristic.

Starting from the first debate, Corey Booker and Beto O’Rourke battled it out to see who would become the Democrat Party’s bilingual champion like it was “America’s Got Talent”.

Not only were they speaking Spanish but what gets lost was what they were saying in Spanish. Well, of course, they were discussing immigration…that’s all Hispanics care about, right?

I would notice how many of the Democrat presidential hopefuls would magically bring up reparations when they knew there would be black people around or if the debate was in a state that had a large population of black people but you would never hear a word about it ever again.

Whether you’re for reparations or not, Democrats use this as an identity politics signaling gesture and they’ll always give a jumbled response as to what reparations would look like to them but we all know the reality behind it: it’ll likely never happen and they don’t intend for it to happen.

In the meantime, black people don’t get the acknowledgment to discuss policies revolving around economics, immigration, guns, or any other substantive policy that any other demographic gets to bring up.

Instead, you’ll get Kamala Harris on “The Breakfast Club” radio show discussing her smoking weed in college and maybe a Democrat politician talking about decriminalizing marijuana to “help a brotha out”.

Speaking of Kamala, when Joe Biden became the Democrat nominee, he outright stated “I’m looking for a black female VP”. Why? That’s very specific. Well, to appease the blacks, of course. Kamala Harris is literally a diversity hire and I’m supposed to be happy about this?

Identity politics is essentially symbolic politics. How does Kamala Harris becoming Vice President actually help black people besides showing up in a history book? What substantive benefit is it to select someone based on their sex & race specifically?

Years ago, people would assume that someone was an affirmative action hire but now, with the wide acceptability of identity politics, they just say it out loud as if it’s a point of pride.

But here is how it translates to me: I, Joe Bide, a white man, picked a black woman for you, so be happy because you’re not getting anything else.

The 2020 Democrat primaries were enough for me and I couldn’t take the pandering anymore. I couldn’t rationalize people who were on my side openly using racial selections for roles of leadership. I couldn’t take the constant pandering to the superficial as a way to distract from their empty policy visions.

I realized that this current mold of Democrats are elitist & race essentialists who will never look past my pigmentation. They can look at me and know what I want and there is something dirty about that reality. To them, I am not a man who happens to be black but a black who happens to be a man.

And it’s become apparent that they’ll do anything possible to use it as a point of political manipulation to make me fearful of the other side. Haven’t you heard that Republicans and conservatives are racist? Jim Crow 2.0? Actually, Jim Eagle! Black people can’t get an ID, that’s asking too much of them. So, vote Democrat today so we can restore your voting rights even though 2020 had a historic black voter turnout.

Adam B. Coleman, adambcoleman.substack.com @wrong_speak

My favorite version of AOC is the black southern Baptist preacher version. It's like an initiation into the Democrat establishment when they invoke the preacher twang.

Whether it’s progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez diving into her southern Baptist preacher twang to appease the black voter bloc or establishment Democrat Corey Booker using a debate stage as his personal Duolingo practice session to apaciguar (appease) the Hispanic voter bloc, to them, we Americans are nothing more than what we are born as and they’ll always shy away from what we have in common to highlight our superficial differences.

Today, I am fearful that because this political strategy is being seen as the acceptable norm for Democrats, Republicans are going to play copy-cats in this failing strategy and I’ve seen some instances where some on the right are drinking the identity politics Kool-Aid ignoring that it’s political poison.

I’m tired of the condescending nature of the average Democrat politician. As someone who is part of the “black bloc”, prison reform is nowhere near the top of my list. The majority of black Americans are middle class and overwhelmingly have no prison record. It is insulting to think that black people don’t care about anything else but.

I will never support a party that thinks this way of appealing to voters is appropriate. Today, the Democrats aren’t the party of liberalism but social progressivism that is elitist, racist, and filled with false virtue.

I am done with the Democrats and I’ll remain an Independent in case Republicans start to make the same mistake.

---