Tag Archives: Frank Luntz

The Real Identity Politics

One of the many things that exasperate me about what currently passes for political dialogue is the substitution of labels for efforts to communicate. (And yes, I find myself engaging in that practice from time to time–it’s easier to call the administration “fascist” than to carefully describe the behaviors that lead me to affix that label. Mea culpa.)

Although people on all sides of the political divide indulge in this dismissive exchange of epithets, there’s one particularly dishonest label that is increasingly employed by MAGA and the Right: Identity politics. The accusation is a companion to the “woke” label and the persistent attacks on DEI and similar efforts meant to erase the bigotries that have made life more difficult for women and minorities.

If there is one tactic that the MAGA movement has perfected, it is calling out its opponents for behaviors that are actually its own. A recent article from the New Republic pointed out that it is the Right, not the Left or Center Left, that is consistently engaged in “identity politics.”  The article was a conversation with Kimberle Crenshaw, a noted scholar of America’s various forms of bigotry and their interrelationship.

Crenshaw began by discussing the anti-Black animus that is the core of Trump’s agenda and appeal–an animus that has become too obvious for the rest of us to ignore–and the way in which anti-Black and anti-woman bias worked to defeat Kamala Harris.

I found one observation especially “on target,” because it gets to the root of the way labeling often deflects reality. Crenshaw points out that when the Right screams “identity politics” it defines identity politics in “terms of women, queer people, and Black folks.”

When Trump and MAGA world say things like, If you want to get anything done, you have to put white men in charge, they don’t call that identity politics. When they take all the books off the shelves that they think are about identity politics and leave Mein Kampf on the shelves at the Naval Academy, that’s identity politics that they don’t talk about. So the identity politics that is at the core of the anxiety that MAGA builds itself into is never named.

So it’s clear that there’s a particular kind of identity politics that they are willing to wrap themselves in. And that’s an old-school, long part of the American faction that wanted to think about the United States as a white, male, Christian country, which has now shown up in white Christian nationalism. That is the identity politics of the moment.

It is in pursuit of protecting the prerogatives of that identity–White Christian male identity–that MAGA and the Trump administration are attacking any and all efforts to promote equity in what is, despite their hysterical denials, a multiracial society.

That is their identity politics now. It’s called the assault on improper ideology. And if you want to see what it looks like in real time, look at their assault on DEI. The assault on DEI is basically if people of color, if women, if any people who don’t look like us, are in any way involved in something that is bad, we can say that they are the fault of it.

And what does that mean? If you happen to be the mayor of Baltimore when a ship collides into your bridge, because you’re Black and you are there, we can pin the responsibility on you. If there’s an air disaster over Washington, D.C., we can pin it on DEI. No proof, no nothing. All we have to do is claim it.

When I read this, my first thought was “of course! Why didn’t I see this before?” When I thought about that question–why I hadn’t recognized the real identity politics–I had to (grudgingly) give the Right credit for learning the lessons taught years ago by Frank Luntz and first employed by Newt Gingrich.

Luntz advocated using vocabulary that was carefully crafted to produce a desired political effect (an effect that didn’t include descriptive accuracy). He counseled GOP strategists to use the term death tax instead of estate tax, for example. Luntz has described his specialty as “finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”

I don’t know whether Luntz was personally involved in the (mis)use of the term “identity politics,” but that tactic–accusing opponents of something you yourself are doing–certainly bears his hallmark.

And that hallmark is misdirection, not communication. 

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When Frank Luntz is Worried…..

Frank Luntz is one of the people who gave us today’s GOP–a party that has steadily become more fixated on strategies for winning elections than on fidelity to a governing philosophy. He was the guru who coached candidates for office in “framing”–how to use language to describe policies in ways that would seem acceptable to people who probably wouldn’t find those policies very congenial otherwise.

For most of his (lucrative) career as a political strategist, you wouldn’t find Luntz among the legions of concerned party faithful warning  that the party’s longterm electoral prospects are dim. But now, even he is sounding the alarm. And that alarm is not connected to the harm being done to the GOP “brand” by The Donald.

In a March article about young voters, he recited the Grand Old Party’s daunting prospects, noting that

Americans ages 18 to 29 made up 19% of the vote in 2012, and President Obama pulled about 60% of their support. This year, they’re even more engaged: Nearly six in 10 (57%) say they are following the election “extremely” or “very” closely. And it’s just the primaries! What’s more, 87% respond that they are “extremely” or “very” likely to vote in the general election.

And what does this newly engaged cohort think about the GOP?

The Republican Party doesn’t have a problem with younger voters. Younger voters have a problem with the Republican Party, and it is rapidly becoming a long-term electoral crisis.

In our recent national survey of 1,000 first- and second-time voters ages 18 to 26, Republicans weren’t just off on the wrong track. They were barely on the radar with this Snapchat generation, as it is sometimes called….

The problem, or “crisis” if you’re an active Republican, is in their political identification. Fully 44% identify themselves as Democrats, higher in my polling than any age cohort in America. By comparison, about 15% call themselves Republican, lower than any age cohort. The remaining 42% say they’re independent, but on issue after issue they lean toward the Democrats. It’s not that young people love the Democratic Party — they don’t. But they reject the Republican Party and the corporate interests it appears to represent. Democrats can live with this dynamic. Republicans might die by it.

Luntz recognizes the problem, but seems oblivious to the reasons for it. For him, it’s still just strategy–the form of the message, rather than the substance. For example, he blames rejection of the GOP by young Americans in part  on the Democrats’ better use of social media, and says the GOP should follow the example of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who endorsed a presidential candidate via Snapchat.

What Luntz and much of the Republican establishment fail to recognize is that young voters are rejecting what the GOP has become post-Reagan.

My students look at the Republican party and see theocrats. They see stupid bathroom laws and other efforts to marginalize their LGBT friends. They see corporate fat cats prospering at the expense of the hard-working poor. They see efforts to disenfranchise minority voters and cut back on school lunch programs. They see the Congressional “Party of No” rejecting and obstructing a President they admire–and they recognize that the primary motivation for that obstruction is racism and a stubborn refusal to come to terms with the fact that a black man won the White House.

Research confirms that this generation is considerably more inclusive than those that preceded it, concerned about their communities, and critical of entrenched privilege. When they look at today’s GOP, they don’t see principled defenders of liberty and markets and a level playing field–they see oligarchs fielding armies of lobbyists to protect their tax loopholes and subsidies at the expense of the Walmart greeter and the McDonald’s server.

There is no doubt in my mind that this generation will change America’s mean-spirited political culture for the better. I’m less sanguine about what it will take to uproot the entrenched systems–from gerrymandering, to provisions in the tax code, to intimidation of the judiciary, to the growth of “propaganda media”– that make political change much more difficult.

One thing I do know: mastering Snapchat will not bring young voters into the GOP.

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