Posted on 12/18/2020 6:05:52 AM PST by Kaslin
Identity politics seems to be sticking around. Important election results seemed to refute the notion that Americans vote for their ethnic or racial identity. Hispanic voters trended significantly toward the supposedly anti-Hispanic Donald Trump, and Californians, while voting 63% for Joe Biden, rejected racial quotas and preferences in a referendum by an even larger margin than in the 1990s.
But Joe Biden, even as the Supreme Court rejected the last pro-Trump lawsuit and the Electoral College confirmed his 306-232 majority, seemed to be playing identity politics with his major appointments. "Identity-based groups," The New York Times is reporting, "continue to lobby Mr. Biden to ensure racial and gender diversity at all levels of his administration."
He's facing demands for two Cabinet posts for "Latinas," for a black attorney general and for a Native American interior secretary. He's facing criticism for placing "people of color" in posts for which they have no apparent expertise -- Xavier Becerra at the Department of Health and Human Services, Susan Rice at the Domestic Policy Council.
Every incoming president faces vexing choices -- and scornful criticism -- but it's an especially vexing problem for Democrats. Their party, since its creation in 1832, has been an often-unwieldy coalition of out-groups with grievances and self-appointed advocates. Their urban political bosses developed the art of balancing party tickets dozens of decades ago.
The plaints and pleas of identity-group advocates can sometimes seem disconnected from reality. How many Hispanic-surnamed women out there are determined to renounce the Democratic Party unless Biden appoints to his Cabinet not just one but two Latinas (at least The Times isn't using the university-spawned and unpronounceable adjective "Latinx")? Will black voters really feel betrayed if this Democratic president doesn't appoint a black attorney general as the last Democratic president did?
At this point in our history, it seems apparent that Americans will not only accept but also approve of appointees of any ethnic or racial description, depending on their performance and policies. And one suspects that among the public, if not in the press, most people care more about policy than ethnicity, more about competence than ticket balancing.
On that count, the Biden administration is shaping up to be less radical than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her squad may like, but also sharp-edged in its partisanship. Becerra's legal persecution of abortion opponents and Rice's willingness to advance falsehoods about the 2012 Benghazi attack are pertinent examples that could prove of greater importance than their racial classifications.
A sharp-edged partisan tone was also apparent in Joe Biden's mostly emollient remarks Monday night during which he acknowledged his victory in the Electoral College.
"It's time to turn the page as we've done throughout our history," Biden said, "to unite, to heal." He promised to "be president for all Americans." But he also took pains to rebuke Donald Trump and Republicans who have supported the Texas attorney general's lawsuit to overturn the results in four other states, rejected by an essentially unanimous Supreme Court.
Biden was right in disparaging that particular case and for noting that other pro-Trump lawsuits were not successful. But he was wrong to suggest that Trump's victory four years ago was accepted ungrudgingly by Democrats.
On the contrary, congressional Democrats then, on no more basis than the Texas attorney general had last week, challenged the Electoral College results. And Obama administration intelligence and law enforcement officials interfered in the political process during and after the campaign, continuing for years after Trump was inaugurated to advance the charge of collusion with Russia, for which no credible evidence has ever appeared.
The plaints and pleas of identity-group advocates can sometimes seem disconnected from reality. How many Hispanic-surnamed women out there are determined to renounce the Democratic Party unless Biden appoints to his Cabinet not just one but two Latinas (at least The Times isn't using the university-spawned and unpronounceable adjective "Latinx")? Will black voters really feel betrayed if this Democratic president doesn't appoint a black attorney general as the last Democratic president did?
At this point in our history, it seems apparent that Americans will not only accept but also approve of appointees of any ethnic or racial description, depending on their performance and policies. And one suspects that among the public, if not in the press, most people care more about policy than ethnicity, more about competence than ticket balancing.
On that count, the Biden administration is shaping up to be less radical than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her squad may like, but also sharp-edged in its partisanship. Becerra's legal persecution of abortion opponents and Rice's willingness to advance falsehoods about the 2012 Benghazi attack are pertinent examples that could prove of greater importance than their racial classifications.
A sharp-edged partisan tone was also apparent in Joe Biden's mostly emollient remarks Monday night during which he acknowledged his victory in the Electoral College.
"It's time to turn the page as we've done throughout our history," Biden said, "to unite, to heal." He promised to "be president for all Americans." But he also took pains to rebuke Donald Trump and Republicans who have supported the Texas attorney general's lawsuit to overturn the results in four other states, rejected by an essentially unanimous Supreme Court.
Biden was right in disparaging that particular case and for noting that other pro-Trump lawsuits were not successful. But he was wrong to suggest that Trump's victory four years ago was accepted ungrudgingly by Democrats.
On the contrary, congressional Democrats then, on no more basis than the Texas attorney general had last week, challenged the Electoral College results. And Obama administration intelligence and law enforcement officials interfered in the political process during and after the campaign, continuing for years after Trump was inaugurated to advance the charge of collusion with Russia, for which no credible evidence has ever appeared.
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There’s only two types of identity.. There’s normal people and then everything else on the left.
We can hear story after story about Biden. The fact is, the elephant in the room is that:
1) We have a President, for the first time in the history of this nation, is UNABLE mentally to have a press conference an answer all questions (unrehearsed) from all comers for a couple of hours.
Read later.
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