Which Identity Is Unworthy? It Might Be Yours.

Identity politics are still the clogged heart of America’s largest political party — still! It’s been decades since grocery stores stopped plaguing shoppers with elevator-rock music and waiting in line while some goof wrote a check for a loaf of bread. But after decades of contrary evidence, Democrats still believe their resentment-mongering identity politics are good for the country.

Utopian belief survives failure. That’s reflected in the party’s star players now proudly identifying as Democratic Socialists. The heart is ailing, the diagnosis wrong, but the beat goes on.

Politicizing inborn identities became the Democrats’ main agenda when they had no other marketable ideas. In this century, their racial pandering and demands for identity obedience are producing diminishing returns.

Meanwhile, they’ve moved on to a class-focused version of identity politics, one they never acknowledge. Having become increasingly attached to rich elites and the dependent poor, increasingly “progressive” leftists gradually abandoned people in the middle. The middlers couldn’t donate big money anyway.

Those politics quietly produced a diffuse unworthy identity: the private-sector middle class, the middle outside Democrats’ warm embrace of 23.5 million government jobs (a huge majority unionized and voting for the correct party).

Have you been seeing fewer middle class people lately and far fewer happy ones? Look soon before they disappear. Or just look at California, where a middle class once large and healthy now has two options: accept more misery enforced by demanding, incompetent government or join the flight to a less miserable state.

If you have the identity now deemed ignorable by progressive deemers, well, too bad for you. Like the no-bail, anti-prosecution policies that put repeat criminals back on streets of the cities Democrats control, the invisibility of the private sector middle class is a political perspective they don’t talk about.

Dems never gave up the politics of racial identity. Broad-minded, they expanded their reach to include Hispanic / Latino, Asian, Native American, and Pacific Islander (of course, not Long Islander).

Then they took identity politics international. In a 2019 presidential debate, Joe Biden — at that point still able to recite talking points slowly explained to him — addressed a worthy global political identity. He urged potential immigrants worldwide to “surge to the border” as “people are seeking asylum.” That promoted an enlarged parade to the U.S. of 10 -15 million of the world’s needy, few being political targets, virtually all eager for free food and shelter, free education and health care, and — for certain street merchants — ready cash customers.

There’s also a religious identity favored by Democrats, now an important constituency in two northern states. It’s not Christian.

I probably missed some other worthy identities. Please don’t send me to re-education camp.

One identity ineligible for Democrats’ political merchandising remains obvious. It includes most hockey fans, most collectors of vintage lunch boxes, most people who dance awkwardly — you know, people who find croquet exciting.

Of course, gender identity is also marketable now. If you missed the lettered identity update (I did until I looked it up just now) it’s grown to LGBTQIA+. The old traditional option is now called Cisgender or Cis. Potentially confusing, especially if you have a sister you called “Sis.” Identity politics keep becoming more challenging.

The Socialist-Marxist left now raging through our streets and the pages of The New York Times keeps villainizing the unworthy identities electorally (the 77 million who voted for you-know-whom) and recognized dermatologically (you see them engaged in bicycling and yoga).

Since Democrats can’t pander to everyone, this identity abandonment requires a trade-off. It’s a class they once claimed to champion, though that claim was then delivered on black-and-white televisions. During the Obama years their message shifted from “We’re all for the working people” to “You people should learn how to code.”

Consider the private-sector middle class blithely abandoned by Democrat strategists in the 21st century: small business owners, tradespeople, mid-level corporate employees, self-reliant entrepreneurs, self-employed strugglers, people who don’t live on government paychecks, people whose economic security has been strangled while the left’s identity politics conversation consumed all the oxygen.

“Plutocracy,” is defined as ”a country or society governed by the wealthy.” Democrats’ 21st century politics might be called Two-Tiered Plutocracy.

Seems strange that a political party can thrive on two dramatically polar bases:

— one fueled by the fortunes and posturing of the doctrinally-educated wealthy, these worthies safe behind gated walls and lifetime security

— one scraping by in failing cities with street camps, depended on to produce large voting majorities and never-ending appetites for government support

But one party is sure trying.

Democrats’ dual focus on big-money interests and little-money interests actually makes cynical sense. They established a polarized power base that no longer needed marginalized middle strugglers (who can’t even express valuable appreciation).

When your “progressive” movement is tight with the likes of Bill Gates and George Soros, The New York Times and most every faculty except Hillsdale’s, plus everyone whose survival depends on government benefits or paychecks, you don’t need Louie the landscaper or some guy struggling to make a living on a small feed store in Iowa.

Criticism of identity politics needn’t deny that real discrimination has occurred or that addressing its remnant is valid. It does raise the question of whether identity politics has become a substitute for economic justice rather than an advancement of it.

So if you’re in the shrinking private-sector middle class, how worthy is your identity? As judged by the left’s legacy media, nearly all teachers and professors, Hollywood and TV elites, and the party being overtaken by the faction that wants to “seize the means of production,” you’re not just unworthy, you’re unseen.

You might have voted for the presidential candidate recently described by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (soon retiring after running Congress and a magical investment portfolio for what seemed like forever) as “ . . . just a vile creature. The worst thing on the face of the Earth.” Your vile vote and 77 million others made that creature victorious.

Trump populism seems to be slightly turning back the tide of middle class marginalization. But the deep staters behind Two-Tiered Plutocracy, perpetually contemptuous about everything outside government control, will never give up. Their war against capitalism has angry armies of seizure on both coasts and in Chicago, even the “Minnesota Nice” Twin Cities.

Decent armies need to fight back. At least as much as the entitled rich and the patronized poor, America’s once-healthy middle class is worth saving. The alternative is the United States of California.