Identity Politics and the Gender Card

Identity Politics and the Gender Card

A couple interesting articles juxtaposed over the weekend:

The Los Angeles Times runs "Clinton gladly plays the gender card", discussing the growing gender gap in the Democratic primary electorate:

A Zogby survey in late March found that Clinton outstripped her competitors, leading with 42% of likely primary voters among Democratic women, compared with 19% for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and 15% for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Clinton held a much thinner lead among male Democratic voters. At 28%, she barely edged Obama, who was at 26%, with Edwards trailing at 11%.

More interestingly, the article looks at the efforts to expand that gap into a Vote Fore Me Because movement.

Her New York tours are now the templates for the town hall "conversations" she uses on the campaign trail to introduce herself to primary voters.

Her aides say the heavily attended events are not aimed solely at women. But Clinton's relaxed demeanor, her chatty references to her ex-president husband and her supporters' chants of "you go, girl" have all given the events the breezy air of an "Oprah" telecast.

While Clinton pursues her charm offensive, she and her aides have assembled a constellation of former staffers and allies from women's activist circles. The Clinton organization is also building a formidable women's apparatus, harnessing the passion of fervent supporters into a nationwide network of volunteers and fundraisers.

The networking push is headed by Ann Lewis, a longtime Clinton aide who also manages other women-themed efforts for the campaign, including "I Can Be President," a Web-based program to build a core group of volunteers among young women and teenagers.

The Oprah reference was over the top, LA Times (Winfrey is believed to be backing her fellow Chicagoan anyway). But is it a bad thing for teenage girls to envision themselves as presidents? Certainly not, says this dad of a 17 year old daughter. But is Vote For Me Because an intellectually honest, or a fair, strategy?

That's the question asked by Jeffrey Feldman in "The Identity Voter", defined as "a person who chooses to support a political candidate primarily for the social and cultural aspects of the person (e.g., gender, race, geography, class, etc.), and only secondarily if at all for the policies of the politician." The piece came out a month or so ago but has gathered some steam this week.

Being an identity voter does not mean, of course, voting for a candidate who is the same identity as oneself. Identity voters are not simply voting for themselves, but are making a political choice--seeing distinctions in a field of candidates--based on identity variables rather than policy positions.

There are, in other words, plenty of white identity voters, for example, who will support Barack Obama "because he is African-America" and plenty of male identity voters who will support Hillary Clinton "because she is a woman."

At a very basic level, the identity voter solves all the problems we face by not facing them at all--chooses to make his or her choice for President about a much larger, much more historic decision: first African-American, first woman, first Latino, and so forth. The identity voter pushes everything aside that occupies the day-to-day debates of activists and elected officials to make his or her next vote for President about big, historic change.

So far, so good. But then Feldman challenges his own point:

Crossing identity barriers in American politics is important, but should crossing those barriers be top priority for America right now?

Looking back to the LA Times article:

"The one person I'm not looking at is Hillary Clinton," said Meg Hirshberg , a New Hampshire Democrat and prominent fundraiser. "She hasn't been clear and consistent. Right now, the war in Iraq overrides everything else."

So Meg is off Hillary's list of one's. Feldman continues:

There is nothing inherent in being African-American or a woman or Latino or white, for example, that makes one more suited to solve the crisis in Iraq or more suited to fix our health care system. And yet, despite agreement at that very basic point, I suspect far more Americans will still cast an identity vote than either bloggers or paid journalists realize or are writing about at this moment.

And this raises a very vexing, very troubling conclusion: Is the identity voter someone to be celebrated or criticized by political activists?

The identity voter is something to be recognized, as the Clinton camp is doing, and something to be factored into analysis, which we bloggers have been poor at according to Feldman.

In that rising world of technology-driven, media-engaged, political activism, identity politics has been largely absent. The netroots in particular has been a movement driven by a Utopian idea of political participation that has--albeit not by any conscious choice--kept distinctions on the basis of race, class and gender to a minimum.

But it's there, in the real world and in the trenches of politics, and has been there forever, since Rum Romanism and Rebellion, since the epic Irish vs. Italian Boston battles Tip O'Neill told tales about. But is what matters today The First or The Best? Maybe The First is The Best but maybe not. And if you're John Edwards, backed into a corner by two Firsts, how do you get out?

And what happens when two Firsts (or even three if you count Bill Richardson) collide? Which First is the trump card?