The Democrats still don’t get it, do they?
To a backdrop of folksy guitar music, Oklahoma suburbs and sepia photographs, the video set out to embarrass Donald Trump. Unfortunately for its lead actress, it has backfired – rather spectacularly.
The leading lady is Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who chose, three weeks before the US midterm elections, to publish a toe-curling, mini biopic about her Native American ancestry. You might wonder why.
It’s long been known that Ms Warren fancies a run at the presidency and she has, it seems, allowed the current president to get under her skin. Mr Trump has been mocking the Democrat for years over her claims of Cherokee ancestry, dubbing her “Pocahontas”, accusing her of using her phoney minority status to advance her academic career and daring her to take a DNA test.
The senator’s six-minute video response takes in her Republican brothers poring over family photos in Oklahoma, various law school professors praising her academic reputation, and then – just as Mr Trump had requested – a guy from a genetic testing company confirming, over the phone: “You absolutely have native American ancestry in your pedigree.” Upon which, Ms Warren nods approvingly.
To be clear, the DNA test found that the senator is anywhere from 1/32nd to 1/1024th Native American, (compared to 1/555th for the average, white American). But this revelation did not have quite the effect Ms Warren desired. Rather than embarrassing the president, it has buried its creator in an avalanche of mockery, not least from the secretary of state for the Cherokee Nation, who called it “inappropriate”.
Any normal person could, of course, have told Ms Warren that her video was a very, very bad idea. That the senator herself could not see it tells us quite what a strange bubble she inhabits.
In this parallel universe, what the Democrats need most is to double-down on identity politics and minority rights as lead issues, rather than emphasising their common cause with the millions who abandoned them.
Ms Warren could have chosen to focus on experiences she has in common with these voters, such as the financial struggles of her lower middle-class parents, her first job waitressing at 13, her brothers serving in the military, and her suburban, Methodist upbringing. In the rarefied world of US law schools, however, that’s social suicide. Far better to stake some claim to cultural exotica and even better if it has overtones of victimhood and oppression.
Mr Trump’s election signalled that something big had changed in US political culture. The Democrats, however, are still making the same mistakes.