BIPOC to the Middle?
About this episode
The episode discusses the shifting dynamics within the Democratic Party regarding race and ideology, highlighting the changing roles of Black and white Democrats over the decades.
From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, Democratic centrists complained that Jesse Jackson and his progressive allies were pushing the party too far left. Using the leverage of his Rainbow Coalition, Jackson pushed the party conventions to adopt more liberal stances than the nominees wanted. Now, some 40 years later, the racial and ideological split in the Democratic Party has been flipped on its head. White, well-educated liberals are the proponents of cultural and identity policies that often alienate swing middle-class voters. Black and other minority Democrats are a strong force for moderation. This results from the changing demographic characteristics of white Democrats, especially whites with college degrees, and the shifting focus of the liberal agenda from racial and economic equality to culture war issues. Black voters today are no longer on the party’s left flank. Since the late 1990s the share of white Democrats identifying as liberal roughly doubled, from about 30 percent to 61 percent, while Black Democrats moved only modestly. White voters without college make up about a quarter of the Democratic coalition. White college graduates are now more liberal across the…
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