Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan and Fox News host Steve Doocey made for strange bedfellows last month, jointly criticizing Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party for, as Doocey put it, favoring “identity politics” and “greenhouse gas” over “talking about jobs.” Their conversation was in many ways emblematic of the tension at the heart of the post-Trump American left. As Samantha Bee put it on Monday night’s Full Frontal, Democrats are currently lost “in the wilderness,” forced to choose between economic populism and cultural issues.
But Bee had a message for Rep. Ryan, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the other left-leaning politicians who have recently lambasted the “identity politics” focus: The Democratic Party still needs to place marginalized groups at the fore of its mission. Pointing to conservatives’ deliberate attempt to discredit progressive economic policies—as well as the fact that Clinton was, in fact, seen as the better economic choice in nearly every swing state—Bee argued that this sort of party infighting plays right into the opposition’s hands. Plus, even if the opposition was right about Democrats’ shift in strategy, Bee cautioned that it might not be such a bad thing. In at least one case, at least, it worked out pretty well.
