The 2020 Democratic primary season is officially open and already candidates are under attack both from within and outside the party.  Saturday night, Donald Trump one-upped his already racist labeling of Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” suggesting she would be more effective by posting Instagram videos from sites such as Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen.  (Did he get that idea from the portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office?).  And Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard is under fire from Democrats for past comments opposing marriage equality and her association with her father’s organization which promoted conversion therapy (positions which she says she now regrets).

No one should be surprised that the first volleys of the 2020 campaign center around identity politics.  Which brings me to the title of today’s post.  By “T or F?” my goal is not to determine whether the Democratic Party is consumed by an attempt to build a majority coalition based on gender, race, religion and sexual preference.  It is much bigger than that.  Does the healing process so badly needed after two decades of contentious partisanship depend on a single letter in the alphabet?

My hypothesis.  The successful candidate in 2020, regardless of party or ideology, will be the man or woman who focuses not on identiTy politics, but identiFy politics.  Which wannabe chief executive will draw on the aspirations and experiences which cross identity barriers and will respond to events rather than constituencies.  I know what you’re thinking.  There goes Dr. ESP again.  The idealist who suspends reality when it does not fit his world view.

Maybe, but there is enough evidence to suggest this is not as far fetched as some might believe.  Identify politics is what happens when the Muslim community in Pittsburgh reaches out to members of the Tree of Life Synagogue following the mass shooting last October.  Gun violence knows no identity.  Just ask the African American, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Amish, LGBT, urban, rural communities or the parents of school children in both red and blue states.

It is the empathy of a farmer in Iowa or Nebraska who does not get a scheduled farm subsidy for a clerk in the Social Security Administration in Baltimore who did not get paid on Friday. Families of all kind shared a common experience this weekend, gathering around a kitchen table and wondering how they can afford life’s necessities without the revenue on which they depend.

It is a recognition by every American whose parents and grandparents came to the United States in search of a better life despite the risks that the contribution immigrants make to our country depends not on their condition when they first cross our border, but the extent to which they believe in the American tradition of a better life for their children than they had.

The cost of opioid addiction also spans age, gender, race and religious differences.  Examine the data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services for 2016 and 2017.  More than 130 individuals die every day of opioid-related overdoses.  At this rate, there can hardly be a single American who is not themselves or a family member or close friend untouched by this epidemic.  Every one of us can identify with the pain and grief that is all too common.

And most recently we witnessed the power of identify politics with the passage of The First Step Act.  Even Trump, who ran on a “tough on crime” platform signed a bill addressing the need for justice reform.  When the Koch Brothers and the ACLU are on the same side of any issue, it is a clear indication some policies transcend matters of poor versus rich or white versus black.

On the final exam for any candidate for president in 2020, there is only question.  “My agenda for the next four years depends on conditions which affect every American’s life, not who you are?  T or F?”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP