PEOPLE HAVE SAID THIS FOR DECADES, BUT THEY WOULDN’T LISTEN: Minority Identity Politics Creates Majority Identity Politics.

The intellectual historian Mark Lilla has a must-read essay in today’s New York Times explaining how the academic and media fixation on identity politics doomed the center-Left this election cycle. One of his key points: The Democratic Party’s decision build its coalition around race and gender differences, and emphasize those differences in order to mobilize its base, predictably produced a parallel response from the identity groups that were not included . . . .

We often think of the diversity-obsessed left and the alt-right as diametrically opposed to one another, in substance and style. But in their focus on identity, the groups are indistinguishable, which actually leads them to a number of overlapping positions.

Plus: “Both left and right see the politics of group identity as useful to securing short term gains. But in the long run, it will not produce anything good—only tribalism, distrust, and, ultimately, violence.”

Yes, but haven’t had a political class that is willing to sacrifice short-term power for the long-term good of the community for decades.