The GOP is the Party of Identity Politics (In the Pejorative Sense)

Another example of a Democrat running on issues, and a Republican running on various symbolic cultural resentments:

With Tuesday night’s Georgia primary results in, the stage is now set for an epic governor’s race between Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the state Senate running to try to be the first African-American woman elected governor of any state; and Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who successfully ran to the right of already-very-conservative Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.

The ads with which the parties’ respective nominees sealed the deal really illustrate the difference between the two parties in profound ways.

Abrams’s ad is called “Trusted” while Kemp’s is called “Offends,” and they only diverge further from there. Abrams talks about issues, and she talks optimistically about making people’s lives better in a concrete way. Kemp, typically for a 2018 Republican, talks exclusively about diffuse threats to the white Christian cultural order.

Abrams says she has “a boundless belief in Georgia’s future,” and talks about Medicaid expansion, middle-class taxes, and mass transit.

Kemp describes himself as “a politically incorrect conservative” and literally does not mention any policy issues. Instead, he says that he says “Merry Christmas” and “God bless you,” stands for the national anthem, and supports our troops, and that if that offends you, then you shouldn’t vote for him.

I’m tired of Democrats running on a one-plank PUTIN platform.