Weird Whites

The big story out of the grassroots liberal world this week is that several groups have come together, of their own volition, to raise an ungodly amount of money for the presumptive Democratic nominee. This wouldn’t be a particularly novel development except for the fact that these groups identified themselves solely by race and gender.

The first of these, a group called Win With Black Women, organized a fundraising call for Kamala Harris and some forty-four thousand donors showed up. Quite a feat, but nothing compared to what was coming down the pike. About a week later, White Women for Kamala called their own racial sorority together. “WHITE WOMEN: ANSWER THE CALL” blazed one graphic advertising the event. That the slogan could have appeared just as easily on a campaign poster for George Wallace didn’t seem to bother anyone. This call was even more successful. More than two hundred thousand people logged on, making it the largest Zoom conference call ever. But if you don’t think race-based Zoom calls for candidate fundraising is weird enough, take a look at the very strange worldview of the organizer. After the call, she admitted:

Some speakers we reached out to had the wrong idea. They said, “Do I really want to be involved in a white women thing? Why are we segregating this?” There is nuance to it. I get that. But they didn’t understand that it was more like a reckoning than a rally. The black women who love and trust me were telling me I was on the right track.

Though it did sound a lot like a rally, and it was segregated. This is all, frankly, weird. And it’s made weirder by the fact that it doesn’t seem to be letting up. Not a week later, another call to action popped up: White Dudes for Harris. And then several more, for Latinas, Asians, and whoever else (though so far “Dudes” has only appeared with “White”).

Although none of this was directly organized by the Harris campaign, key surrogates like Pete Buttigieg took part — but that may be beside the point. Well-heeled, plugged-in liberals now think this is a reasonable way to talk about politics. The thing is, it’s pretty weird, actually. At the very least, it’s another one of those “hard to imagine before the late 2010s” phenomena that’s been haunting our politics, all while, perhaps not coincidentally, voter dealignment continues apace.

After all, Barack Obama was twice elected president without calling upon white Americans to declare their whiteness as a precondition to organize for his campaigns. Perhaps some might call doing so now kind of “weird”? The fact is, a politics that raises the salience of race and racial difference is not one that seems capable of reducing inequality, boosting prosperity, and bringing working people together.

This does not bode well for our civic health. What will liberals think when “White Men for Trump” pops up, as it surely will? Will they have a right to speak out against such a development? Why?

The Normal Party?

In 2020, Democrats promised a “return to normalcy” — a deliberate pitch to turn down the temperature on the culture wars and offer economic uplift to stabilize workers’ lives. Today the Harris campaign insists that Vance is “creepy” and that Trump is deeply weird. But that only raises the question: Who and what exactly is normal in American politics today?

On big, hot-button cultural and moral issues like crime, immigration, divorce, drug use, and gambling, voters routinely perceive themselves as being closer to moderate or even conservative positions than to liberal ones. And even if this perception is false at the institutional level — that is, even if the Democratic Party does not endorse the total norm-smashing the Republicans say they do — it’s true that the most liberal places in America aren’t exactly known for their staid commitment to normalcy.

“Normal” in America has often been more socially conservative than liberal. Nearly 38 percent of Americans identify as socially conservative, while only 29 percent identify as liberal. On a host of issue-specific questions, it’s liberals (and especially those who identify as “very liberal”) who find themselves well outside of the norm. Consider that while a majority of Americans would like abortion to be legal, only 35 percent think it should be “legal under any circumstances.” Among Democrats, that number climbs to 65 percent. Or take stranger examples: while Americans by and large oppose polygamy, with only 23 percent approval, 39 percent of Democrats are, well, “weird” on the issue. Democrats are weirdly more likely than Americans overall to think infidelity is morally acceptable.

On a host of social issues — issues that dominate the news cycle and define election narratives — we see much the same: liberals are further from the average American than they may want to admit. In other words, for better or worse, liberals can be quite weird. Whether Democrats’ “weird” positions are defensible is beside the point. Liberals may have good reason to be weird in some regards, but is it really worth litigating these kinds of cultural divides to figure out who is weirder? Is this what the election should be about?

There is one way in which the Democrats are a bit more grounded. And that has to do with the economy, a battle zone where congressional Republicans are very much the party of norm-smashing, tax-slashing, and market-worshiping.

Equality, Prosperity, and Stability

Bernie Sanders, despite being in the “weird” position of winning American elections as a socialist at the tail end of the Cold War, said it best when he said that calling Republicans weird was “not my cup of tea” and instead insisted that Democrats attack the GOP on their shoddy economic record.

Progressives need to make the case for raising wages, rebuilding infrastructure, providing new benefits like paid family leave, lowering prescription drugs, and universal (single-payer) health care. They should demand, over and over again, that we raise taxes on the richest individuals. That we make it much easier to join a union. That we invest in new American manufacturing. They should point out that the richest men in the world are lining up behind Trump because he has promised them wonderful goodies once he’s back in office. They should relentlessly remind the nation that the Republican Party has been, and continues to be, the party of big business, the party of tax breaks for the rich, and the party aligned against public schools and committed to shrinking, slashing, and cutting whatever meager benefits the American welfare state still grants.

What’s more, if Democratic leaders are concerned about “weirdness” — and there is good reason to fear the erosion of democratic and certain other social norms — then Harris and company ought to remind Americans about the consequences of the GOP’s total commitment to market fundamentalism. The corporate-sponsored marketization of everything has ushered in profound instability in our social and economic lives. The conservative commitment to organizing our society around the rules of the marketplace has done more to exacerbate normlessness than any other major force.

The case for common sense is a good one. But if Democrats want to make such an appeal, they ought to turn away from attacking Republican leaders on the basis of their “weirdness” and instead attack them on the responsibility the GOP has in ushering in a society of extreme inequality and social instability. If they want to win back working people, saying that Republicans are weird just won’t do.

Instead, they must persuade voters that Republicans are wrong.