This primary has demonstrated the endgame of identity politics, perhaps even worse in real life than it did in theory. Democrats have exploited racial and gender politics for decades, but the irony is that it only succeeds when the groups don’t compete directly against each other. Democrats a generation ago decided that they couldn’t trust voters to select a nominee any more than they could trust Americans to choose their diet or take responsibility for their own health care. They created a system where voters only account for 80% of the delegates to the convention, leaving the party establishment with the deciding vote in any close contest. It means the party will have to select a favorite between its two biggest identity-politics constituencies, women and African-Americans. Democrats are reaping what they have sown over the last forty years. For those in the Democratic Party who don’t get that reference — one familiar to the bitter Bible-clingers — it’s akin to chickens coming home |