At The New York Times last week, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla made a case for this “post-identity liberalism,” a politics that would “[appeal] to Americans as Americans and [emphasize] the issues that affect a vast majority of them.” That means no more “war on women” hysteria, no more wild claims that Republicans are going to send black Americans back to the antebellum South, no more screaming that proponents of traditional marriage are morally and functionally equivalent to Nazis. Regarding the “narrower…highly charged” issues, especially “those touching on sexuality and religion,” Lilla writes, this new liberalism “would work quietly, sensitively, and with a proper sense of scale.”
Good idea. But this could prove much more difficult than the optimistic Lilla is willing to concede. After decades of aggressive identity politicking, many if not most liberals—and younger ones in particular—will probably not take kindly to working “quietly” or “sensitively” on these hot-button issues.
Democrats will have to come to grips with the young activist bloc sooner or later. The older generations—Baby Boomers and others—might be amenable to softening the relentless liberal identity game, if only because they can remember a time when things were done differently. But the share of older generations within the voting population is shrinking, and will continue to. As Pew pointed out, 2016 may have been the last election dominated by voters born prior to 1980.
This will be a problem for Democrats looking to soften the party’s approach to identity issues. On questions of “identity,” or what is often broadly termed “social issues,” younger voters are far more liberal than their older counterparts.
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