Kamala Harris is getting piled on by conservatives for introducing herself including her pronouns at a celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act this week.
Progressives are taking umbrage at the latest swipes at wokeism.
Thing is, there’s a kernel of truth to what conservatives are saying, beneath their usual steaming pile of bulls–t.
Adam Kinzinger, one of the two Republicans that Democrats have come to like a lot for his work on the House Jan. 6 Committee investigating the Trump insurgency, put it best.
“If you ever wonder why the left still can’t win elections despite the insanity of Trumpism, save stuff like this for reference later. You can get mad at me, but I’m not wrong,” Kinzinger wrote on Twitter.
He added later: “People can say I’m being insensitive, but I’m not. I know what this is. I made the point that this kind of stuff does NOT sit well with the middle.”
And he’s right, it doesn’t.
A wide swath of people who identify as Republicans couldn’t tell you the first thing about anything from the party platform, and it’s not like the lives of tens of millions of working-class Republican voters are better because the people they vote for oppose universal healthcare, and give out billions in corporate welfare and tax cuts to the ultrarich that could go to better schools, roads and affordable housing.
The reason they don’t like Democrats is, well …
“My pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her.’”
That’s not the only reason. Not saying that.
What I’m saying is, the vast majority of these voters aren’t Republicans because they love Republican policies, but rather, it’s a cultural thing to them.
And one of those cultural things is, like it or not, not everybody is on board with having to introduce themselves using pronouns.
And you can write these folks off all you want, but in doing so, just realize, these are people who should be allies, and would be, if we – I’m speaking now as a fellow progressive – would just stop talking down to them.
Republicans do nothing for them in Congress, in state legislatures, in city halls and county board meetings across the country.
These are the people most likely to have their lives upended by medical bankruptcies, whose kids are in public schools that are underfunded as electeds in the GOP take money from public education to fund vouchers for upper middle class kids to go to private schools.
They’re the people who don’t have unions protecting their rights in factories and warehouses that require them to work overtime, through their breaks, don’t give them sick pay.
They vote for Republicans because Republicans pretend to listen to their concerns, and Democrats don’t even pretend to listen.
The Democratic Party used to be the party of the working class, but that’s so long ago that you have to read about that in history books.
We need to open up space under the tent for working-class whites who aren’t necessarily up to speed with the people under the tent on things like pronouns.
I think if we’d admit that it even took a lot of us a good bit of time to get up to speed, then we’d be a little more forgiving.
Basically, we can’t keep writing these voters off, because if nothing else, they’re having more kids than we are, and that story that we’ve been telling ourselves, that the old coots who vote Republican are dying off by the day, that will be us.
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Chris Graham
