How Dems are Boxed in on Cultural Issues

The Way Forward is to Focus on Economic Issues; It's Hard To Move That Way When Cultural Issues Still Get all the Attention From the Left

In the aftermath of Trump winning the election, a whole host of businesses and organizations announced they would be scaling back on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The corporate trend the previous five years to lean into DEI initiatives was de-emphasized and more market oriented incentives were back in trend.

The response from white college educated progressives and the African American community were loud and swift; boycott companies abandoning DEI. Within days, lists of companies to boycott circulated on social media sites and targeted many national retailers and brands. Many were companies that had been boycotted for various reasons before, such as Starbucks based on their anti-union stances. However, the odd company that was included on the list and is being damaged the most by the boycotts today was relatively liberal retailer and inclusivity focused Target Corp. Since announcing the boycott, Target stock has dropped over a quarter and is approaching a third. Now, there are lots of factors that go into a company’s stock price (including Trump’s ruinous trade war for example), but Target seems to be directly impacted more than other companies and the boycott seems to be much more “targeted” on Target these days. In fact, the head of an Atlanta Megachurch last week announced he is stepping UP his attacks on Target. Why?

Target seems like a company that progressives would want to prop UP. They do support inclusivity initiatives and looking at their in-store marketing they demonstrate representation better than any other company I know. They may have scaled back the “official” policies of DEI, but in practice they don’t seem to be showing much of this walkback publicly—they still support minority hiring and businesses and initiatives, they just seem to want to go to more of an apolitical footing, like most businesses. If anything, Target, more than most of corporate America, has been an ally of progressives in this cause. Now they seem burnt by it. Part of that may be the perceived betrayal by the pro-DEI community, but if you are still doing more than other companies in that regard, isn’t that still better and shouldn’t you be protesting those OTHER companies?

Nothing demonstrates the box Democrats are currently in politically with DEI than the boycott of Target. In focus group after focus group following the aftermath of the 2024 election, responses regarding cultural issues caricatured the Democratic Party as far too focused on identity politics, and voters weren’t having it anymore. Even as Harris downplayed them as much as possible, the narrative “She’s for they/them, Trump is for you” hammered home in almost comic terms the Democrats’ biggest glaring vulernability. Try talking to a swing voter in a swing state why they should vote Democrat and the default image they have in their mind is that the issues Democrats care most about (cultural ones) don’t help them in any way (economic issues). But it’s hard to get away from DEI, when protests about it still continue and get all the attention, and it also strikes at a core component of the coalition they’ve held together for 50+ years.

For decades, minority voters tended to lean to the Democratic Party. Hispanics tended to vote in percentages close to 60-70%, African-Americans upwards of 90%. These were working class voters back at the time the Democrats were the working class party. Over time, the Democrats became the voice of the college educated, and today the only thing tying them to these groups were cultural ties and identity politics. Over the past decade, Democrats have been losing Hispanic voters over immigration and cultural issues (Hispanic voters are generally more religious, culturally more conservative, and believe in a strong work ethic incongruent with the idea of government assistance). The inroads Trump and Republicans made with this group in 2024 were impactful. But also notable was the loss of a large chunk of African-American voters, even though there was an African-American on the top of the ticket—why did that happen? A big part of it was that people were voting with their pocketbooks and their economic status, not based on their prior allegiances. Working class minorities shifted rightward in a big way. Harris’s moderate tone and downplaying of DEI/cultural issues during the campaign didn’t help win over votes in this group much, largely because it rang so hollow following what she had said in the past.

So Democrats have to do better with these groups (particularly working class voters), or alternatively make up the difference elsewhere, and electoral math is going to play a huge role in which way the party goes. The way I see it, they can go in one of two directions:

1. They can lean back into DEI and cultural politics. This would make progressives very happy, they would quiet these senseless boycotts of corporate allies and put these issues back front and center. The downsides to this approach are actually many. First, and probably most important, you alienate voters pretty much everywhere else across the political spectrum. In addition, businesses never really cared much for DEI to begin with (despite how much lip service they give that left an impression they did) because it requires costs to implement that work against their bottom lines, and their goal is profit motive. Leaning back into DEI also allows Republicans to tar the left with the most unpopular aspects of it, much like they did with the anti-trans ads late in the 2024 campaign. Lastly, there is no guarantee those white progressives and African American boycotters are going to fall back in line; it’s far more likely after finding success in getting the party to kowtow to them that they go searching for other targets to make examples of, creating a downward spiral of toxic activism. This approach is an electoral loser, plain and simple.

2. The second approach is to play to the middle of the electorate, and moderate their tone on DEI (even not speak of it going forward, as Jonathan V. Last advocates here). This will put more seats across this country in play, get more of corporate America on board (especially when the alternative is Trump) and shift the focus on more economic pocketbook issues rather than toxic cultural ones. Working class and economic issues transcend region and identity and could result in a huge blue wave. But this comes with it’s drawbacks too. For starters, it means that visible boycotts and progressive activism INCREASES against this shift, and may result in a further populist progressive movement shifting left or abandoning the party altogether. Don’t believe it will happen? Next time there is a “National Day of Protest” (there’s one like planned every month), count how many rainbow flags, Black Lives Matter, Handmaiden outfits and signs catering specifically to women, minorities and LGBTQIA+ groups there are. You can’t have unity when everyone sees themselves more as part of a sect than in the overall group.¹ That paradigm didn’t help Harris much in the past election as many progressives stayed at home.² Likewise, it opens the door for Republicans to once again point to the left as a bunch of oversensitive, over privileged professional protesters who are never going to be satisfied; this pretty much undercuts the Democrats’ liberal base. Worst of all, it potentially increases the erosion of minority voters fleeing the Democratic party, when previously they made up a huge base of its voters; in short, the slide away from Dems could continue unabated.

Essentially, to win, Dems need to appeal more to the middle and the working class voters they lost in 2024. They desperately need to expand the map, particularly if they want any prayer of winning the Senate in 2026 in what should be a very blue year. But they are stuck in this paradox where appealing to moderates loses them their activists and base, while appealing to their base alienates the margin they need to win, not just nationally but in many contested House districts across the country. And as Ruy Teixiera at The Liberal Patriot notes here, white college educated voters are the most ideological:

The point about ideology is very important. Right now, Democrats are dominated by the most ideological voters in the country—white college-educated voters. It’s no secret that Democrats have been doing increasingly well with white college-educated voters, even as they’ve been slipping with nonwhite and working-class (noncollege) voters. Between the 2012 and 2024 elections, Democratic performance among white college graduates improved by 17 points, while declining by 37 points among nonwhite working-class voters…

Taken together with the trend data, this means that as Democrats have increasingly relied on white college voters, they have been adding many more ideologically consistent liberals while shedding less ideological nonwhites with mixed policy preferences. Strikingly, among the most liberal voters—those who agree with liberal positions more than 90 percent of the time—there are 20 times more white college-educated voters than black voters.

These developments can only push the party toward being uncompromisingly and uniformly liberal in its policy orientation—and that is indeed what we’ve seen. Moreover, the cultural outlook of highly liberal white college graduates—given the heavy weight of this group in the Democratic Party infrastructure, as well as in sympathetic media, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations, and educational institutions—has inevitably come to define the culture associated with the party.

The more they focus on the economic issues that can tenuously unite this very fractured coalition, the better their odds. However, focusing on boycotts on cultural issues, protesting everything that draws attention to identity politics and using opportunities to demonstrate as opportunities to push a cultural agenda makes that much more difficult to do. There’s an atomic bomb of electoral energy out there to unlock, but the fallout of choosing one path over the other could just end up damaging their own side.

And it’s not just me saying it. Jonathan V. Last thinks you should stop dallying with wokeness and cultural politics altogether and should heap on pedal to the metal how completely incompetent and collapsing the Trump Economy is, and he’s right. Laying the groundwork and emphasizing the craptacular economy and placing at the feet of Trump will go much further, impact far more voters and will be a raven hanging over Republicans for four years much more than protesting Target.

Instead of giving a speech about the party being “woke and weak,” Sen. Slotkin could go to the Port of Seattle and give a speech in front of the nearly empty docks, explaining why the dockworkers and truckers are about to lose their jobs and priming people so that any time they see an empty shelf, anywhere in America, they intuitively think: “Trump did that.”

It does appear that there will be leadership changes coming in the Democratic Party over the next year or so. The Member who has the strength and ability to bridge these gaps and untangle this particularly thorny knot may be the one who comes out on top of that. The Democratic Party needs a Sister Souljah moment in the worst possible way, byu divorcing economic politics from the cultural clash shitshow. However, who in the party has the gravitas and strength to deliver it without the backlash? It’s a good question, one that we will have to wait and see on.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

In 2015, Target announced a policy that allows for new mothers to breast feed their babies anywhere they please on the premises. Housewares, electronics, sporting goods, stationery—no department is exempt. The policy was publicized after one mother was erroneously told to cover up in Texas and stores experienced organized “nurse-ins” in protest. This policy is still in effect.

A member of the family that founded Target (the Dayton family), Mark Dayton, was once a Democratic United States Senator and Governor for Minnesota.

Does that sound like a company that shows antipathy to liberal causes and pursuits?

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

There are literally thousands of companies whose policies and corporate positions are far less inclusive than Target’s. Choose your “targets” better and select one of those to protest and make an example of.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Here is where I feel obligated to say, leave that shit at home. If you want to make a statement, and demonstrate that it’s broadbased and it’s not just the typical liberal snarks, show up with American flags, dress in a sweatshirt ball cap and jeans and if you feel the need to make a sign, make it about economic conditions. The broader and more generic the appearance of the crowd, the more effective the protest will be.

2. Something I find all the more bizarre. They threw a tantrum and sat on their hands as they watch Donald Trump win, and are now all upset about everything he is doing. Seriously, they had a chance to do the right thing in voting against this cretin and didn’t, and are now crying about it. Elections have consequences morons. Thanks for f**king everything up for the rest of the world.