Voting Identity

Between the questions about whether Barack Obama is "black enough" to Mitt Romney's recent claim that America needs a "person of faith" to be President, it is clear that identity politics is still a powerful force in American politics. I think it's important to recognize that there are different kinds of identity politics, however. I don't see anything necessarily wrong with voting for a candidate in part because he/she has a background characteristic that appeals to you. It needn't even be the case that a candidate shares your identity. Even though I'm (very) white, I like Barack Obama in part because I'd like to see a black president. For the same reason I know a lot of people are supporting Hillary - they want to break the glass ceiling in presidential politics. I have no problem with that.

Generally I'm going to give voters a lot of slack when it comes to identity politics. I do think that we should put very clear boundaries on when identity voting is acceptable. We should never vote against a candidate because of their identity. There's a big difference between voting for Barack because he's black and voting against him because he's black. One is a reasonable statement of social solidarity - of wanting someone who looks like you to represent you. The other is a position of naked bigotry profoundly at odds with how this country is supposed to work.

More importantly, I think candidates should be very, very careful when framing their appeals in terms of identity politics. Candidates who say "vote for me because I'm religious" run the risk of drawing a line between the in-group and everybody else. There's a serious danger of being exclusionary - of saying that we should vote against any candidate who doesn't share that identiy. This does nothing but encourage bigotry and political tribalism. We should repudiate any demagogue who directly or indirectly argues we should vote against a candidate because of their race, ethnicity, religion, etc. I also think that identity appeals are bad politics in the tactical sense - why alienate a whole constituency of people who might agree with you on real issues?

Do I wish that we could dispense with identity politics entirely? Of course I would. But to pretend that there isn't any now is akin to abolishing civil rights laws because we wish there was no racism. It might be better if we all wore paper bags on our heads, but until that day comes African-American voters are going to be more likely to vote for African-Americans, and Protestants to vote for Protestants. It wouldn't work that way if this were the best of all possible worlds, but as should be obvious by now we don't live in that world. We live in this one.

Having said that, I think it is better for the country is we refrain from indulging in identity politics as much as we are able. Voting for a candidate like Hillary or Barack is in part an attempt to get past old tribal loyalties, not reinforce them. Saying that only Christians should be elected to office is to reinforce them. I think that a large portion of the country is eager to get past these fundamentally trivial divisions, and that any candidate - of either party - would benefit from such a message. Meanwhile I hope that candidates who attempt to exploit those divisions pays the political price they deserve - defeat and humiliation.