Perspective

Here's a little identity checkfor Democrats

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published January 20, 2008

It was inevitable that the charge of "identity politics" would eventually take center stage in a presidential primary where the top Democratic candidates are a woman and a black man.

The term has been thrown around a lot lately in the wake of the dust-up between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But I am not going to spend time discussing whether Clinton slighted the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or whether Obama cannily misrepresented what Clinton meant. (Both candidates have commendable records on civil rights, so cut it out.) I'm also not going to talk about a weepy moment, a cackling laugh or pantsuits. (The press should stop focusing on these utter irrelevancies.)

Rather, I am interested in what the term "identity politics" communicates and how it is used to shut down discussion on national issues that are of great importance to large slices of the electorate.

When you hear the term, you think of liberal Democrats and their promotion of gender and racial issues. When Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani promote tax cuts on capital gains, they are not thought of as playing into the identity politics of the rich. And it is rarely even used to describe Mike Huckabee's explicit appeals to Christian Right voters, even though the term rather aptly describes his thinly veiled suggestions that Christians are somehow oppressed.

No, identity politics has been unfairly conflated to mean that part of the American left that sees the world through the lens of racism and misogyny.

And the national electorate no longer has much of an appetite for blaming social ills on racial or gender bias. Society has become far more egalitarian and tolerant since the middle of the last century, and there are many who say that the Al Sharptons of the world are too busy pointing fingers and flapping their gums to have noticed. Count me as one of those.

Moreover, with wages of typical workers stagnant for decades, Americans feel weighed down by the struggle of daily living and have little interest in compensating the ancestral wounds of others.

Clearly both Obama and Clinton understand that the more they are seen as appealing to those who share their race or gender - with ready piles of pundits waiting to alert the nation to it - the more marginal they will appear. That is why the campaigns rather assiduously have their candidates play against stereotype, with Clinton trying to be an antiwar hawk, trotting out Gen. Wesley Clark for support, and Obama, the not-angry black man, careful not to involve strident black figures in his public appearances.

But, for me, one of the great advantages of having a progressive woman potentially heading a national ticket is the real possibility of bringing reproductive freedom back to the forefront of the national agenda.

Obama won't be as passionate as Clinton in his support of a woman's right to control her biology. Not because he's a man mind you, but because he doesn't seem as interested. While Obama promotes an array of civil rights issues, such as eliminating sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, on the "issues" section of his campaign Web site, he doesn't mention women's reproductive freedom.

But go to Clinton's "issues" section and she proudly proclaims her support for Roe vs. Wade.

Access to effective birth control is women's Emancipation Proclamation. Nothing has freed women and bettered their lives and that of their children more than the ability to control the size of their families. Clinton seems to appreciate the momentousness of this - and the way contraception has been under siege by Republicans - in a way that Obama does not.

When the Bush administration's FDA kept dragging its feet, refusing to rule on whether emergency contraception could be available prescription-free and over-the-counter, it was Clinton along with her Senate colleague Patty Murray of Washington who made it a huge issue. They held up the confirmations of first Lester Crawford and then Andrew von Eschenbach as FDA chiefs until the agency made a decision. Approval finally resulted.

This was personal, identity politics and it was brilliant.

Identity politics has been tarred as a dangerous place for Democrats to dwell. But there is nothing radical about helping a woman gain immediate access to contraception that will prevent an unwanted pregnancy. The radical position is the one that stands in her way.

Worrying that they may be painted as fringe, the Democratic front-runners are avoiding campaigning on some core progressive issues. But in doing so they risk losing a big part of their own identities and ignoring the issues that they - and the Democratic primary voter - care most deeply about.

[Last modified January 19, 2008, 20:05:21]