In other words: The class divide within the Democratic Party is growing at the same time that the divide between classes in the United States is doing the same.
The challenge this presents to Democrats is not unlike that confronted by Richard Nixon, when he sought to fortify and expand the GOP’s gains among the white working class. Then, to mollify class tensions within the “silent majority,” Nixon deployed appeals to white identity politics (a.k.a white racial resentment, a.k.a. racism), to obfuscate the divergent material interests of rich and poor Republicans.
In a Democratic Party increasingly divided between a predominately white professional class, and a largely nonwhite working class, left-wing identity politics — or, more precisely, “intersectional” critiques of economic reductionism — can serve a similar end.
And, in fact, Hillary Clinton — and liberal commentators sympathetic to her campaign — used identity politics to that very end, throughout the 2016 Democratic primary.
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