Thomas Ogorzalek: To Win, Democrats Must Do Identity Politics Smarter

By Thomas Ogorzalek
In the exhaustive analyses of why Kamala Harris lost, one of the most common arguments has been that she – and Democrats in general – relied too much on so-called “identity politics” for electoral success. As part of a team at the Alliance for Black Equality (ABE) that spent the past year tracking the vote preferences of Black men, I can say that while the critique falls apart on the merits – for one, Harris pointedly did not lean into identity politics – there’s still much for Democrats to learn in how identity plays out at the ballot box. In short, we need to do identity politics smarter.
First, understand why the critiques ring hollow: It was Donald Trump, not Harris, who campaigned on a messy pile of identitarian appeals and attacks, rather than policy specifics. By contrast, Harris’s campaign themes were either universal (building an opportunity economy for the middle class) or dire (Trump is a threat to democracy). To the extent identity politics figured into the strategy at all, it was Harris’s focus on gender identity and abortion – and that was the part of the campaign that won!
Second, critiques of “identity politics” often end up suggesting that the course correction is to craft appeals based on some other identity– preferably one that doesn’t code as “identity politics.” The most common is “working class.” Yet President Biden appealed intensely to these voters, using pro-labor messaging, attacks on corporate power, and (successful) support for national industrial policy – only to see them cast their lot with Trump. It’s clear that policy (sometimes called “deliverism” or, more simply, getting stuff done) alone won’t do the trick. Successfully reconnecting with working-class voters means finding symbolic, cultural touchpoints that reassure this group that Democrats care about “people like us.”
Throughout this electoral cycle, our team was ringing alarm bells about Black voters, seeing a (modest) erosion in support for the Democratic ticket in this steadfast cornerstone constituency. What we didn’t see was an ideological shift to the right, especially among younger Black men. If anything, young Black men (like young men of all racial groups) are more likely to say they’re liberal than older men. And when we asked these Black Americans what they’d like to hear more about from the campaign—in order to “meet the voters where they are,” the mantra of 2024 electoral gurus—they asked for more direct conversations about topics that clearly resonated with their racial identity: civil rights, workplace discrimination, criminal justice reform. The economy, environment, and foreign policy were further down the list.
Taking these insights from Black Americans seriously, we developed appeals that clarified the stakes of the election in a way that takes identity seriously by tying these appeals to the ways in which Black Americans’ identities are likely to shape their experience of the next four years. Trump’s public statements and platform, along with more detailed plans in Project 2025, bode very ill for Black Americans. Some of these are unsubtle—for example, direct attacks on Black generals and public figures and support for racist practices like “Stop-and-Frisk” policing. Others are in the bureaucratic weeds: ending consent decrees that fight racist policing, undermining offices that enforce civil rights laws throughout federal agencies, and attacks on women’s health that have a disparate impact on Black women. Subtle policies like these are hard to see, and most Americans don’t know much about them, but they are the reason that Black Americans tend to do much better economically under Democratic administrations than under Republican leadership.
In a noisy information environment, it’s crucial to connect the dots between policy and identity like this. And our content worked. In pre-tests, they were highly persuasive against Trump and for Harris, especially among undecided voters. In our precinct-level analyses of the election results, the places we ran ads saw less of a Red shift (and in many cases saw a Blue shift, which was pretty rare across the national map). While many groups and campaigns messaged on Project 2025 and the defense of American democracy in the abstract, from what we can see, we were one of the only groups to zero in on how this agenda will affect the daily life of Black Americans as Black people.
Ultimately, of course, our efforts weren’t enough to cut through the noise and carry the swing states we targeted, but strategies that competently connect identity to —paired with many others, including grassroots relationship-building in all parts of the country to inoculate Americans against fear-mongering and disinformation—need to be part of a Democratic electoral strategy. The evidence is clear: average voters tend not to make cold calculations about the national interest based on policy papers and realistic projections of the future. They’re human beings, complex actors who filter limited news through their identities and experiences to decide what to do. Because people are their identities, we can’t run away from identity politics, because that would mean running away from Americans themselves. We just need to do it better.
Thomas Ogorzalek is Head of Data Science at 2040 Strategy Group.