[Global Times]DIAO Daming: Identity Politics Promotes Tribal Development of the US

The 2018 midterm elections in the US is about to take place in less than two weeks. Currently, Democrats continue to maintain the dominant position, but the key is how many substantive effects its “blue wave” can bring. Through detailed analysis of this so-called “blue wave”, the key driver is a prevailing concept in American politics, namely “identity politics”.

According to experience in recent years, Democrats or Republicans, who tend to create a comeback craze in the year of midterm elections, have put forward some national election platforms in proper time. The funny thing is that the Democratic base failed to provide a political program that guides the national elections this year, but specially arranged a change this time. Statistics show that among the Democratic nominees from the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Congress and the State Houses, the proportions of white males are all lower than 50% historically, while the number of females among Democratic nominees from the Senate and the House of Representatives and state governors has respectively set a new record, larger than any political party in these positions in the history of the US. In other words, the secret weapon of the Democrats in 2018 is female and minority candidates, in order to be labeled with “multiculturalism”.

This “identity strategy” of the Democrats seems to be related with their painful experience in the general election in 2016. Apparently, it is very difficult to make up policy weaknesses in losing blue-collared middle and lower-class groups overnight, but increasing the turnout rate of female and minority groups is deemed as an approach that can be accomplished very soon relatively. The voter mobilization of the Democrats obviously focuses on the groups defined by young, female and minority dimensions in multiple combinations, who used to have a low turnout rate. This strategy hoping to take effect very soon has reflected a cruel reality fundamentally: A certain advantage that the Democrats enjoy in the 2018 midterm elections cannot be regarded as an indicator that judges they can still gain power in 2020. Because the Democrats today do not focus on how to win back blue-collars, which are of vital significance, but go farther on the path of candidate and voter diversification. This option must be decisive and is related with the prospect of the U.S. Political ecology being shifting from polarization to fragmentation and eventually to tribalization.

The new book of the US politician Francis Fukuyama, entitled Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, embraced challenges at theoretical and practical levels since its publishing, but the description about the desire for identification in the book actually indeed explains the behavioral logic of the Democrats and Republicans. In the context of economic globalization and technological advancements, people seem to own standard physical conditions, but are gradually losing personal identity. In the age of Internet, any ordinary person seems to enjoy the benefit of Internet popularity, but the precondition is that they must be more reliant on it, and this reliance hasn’t changed the situation of most people in reality. As the sense of self-existence is gradually collapsing, the injustice regarding economic and social policies has led to a deeper sense of being discriminated, ignored and marginalized, particularly for minorities who originally enjoyed disadvantages in power, women and blue-collared middle and lower-class groups who were affected by economic globalization.

In this sense, Trump's critical reliance on blue collars is also an embodiment of identity politics. Standing on the opposite of Trump, the identity tag that can be reinforced by the Democrats is naturally women and minorities. When politics is divided with identity, its essence is the process of consolidation and fragment synchronization.

Trump's identity attraction to white blue-collared middle and lower-class groups still has certain class costs, and may not be closed completely. However, the Democrats’ identity politics today fully depends on some barely changeable labels to achieve mobilization. When gender, sex, race, ethnicity and the place of origin are deemed as the labels of political stands, the Democrats and Republicans only balance different interests, but cannot effectively integrate the interests, with the distribution of these interests that need the balance consisting of a reality of tribalization.

Dominated by identity politics, to maintain or attract the critical support from some tribal groups, no matter ruled by whichever political party, the US government can choose to push forward domestic and foreign policy agendas only suited for the interests of those tribes. The largest embodiment in reality is that the Democrats continue to forge migration loosening policies with the support of minority groups. Winning votes of blue-collars is the key to get the throne of the White House in the US, which has also driven the two parties to fast respond to the interests of this group simultaneously. Even the policy integration with short-sighted effects may not only refer to trade wars of the Trump administration, but also a resume of trade protectionism policies after the Democrats master the Congress and even come to power in the future. The trade protectionism advocated by the Democrats will surely add the desire for rules and rights of neglected groups. In this way, distorted by electoral politics, the national interests of the US have been deconstructed into mixed national interest combinations in the eyes of different tribal groups. But when the US foreign policy is more inclined to certain special domestic interests, dealing with the US has become a thing that cannot be completely considered with reason of state.

It seems the result of 2018 midterm elections is not that important for the result of the general election in 2020. Because any American political figure will have to be involved in the political torrent of pursuing and underscoring identification. In this sense, President of the Divided States of America, the cover figure selected by Time magazine in 2016, is rather reasonable. A state of tribes is naturally divided, and there will never be one selected as President of the Divided States of America.

(The author is research fellow of the National Academy of Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China as well as associate professor of the School of International Studies)