Rhetorical question: are republicans really alone in this?

Pretty much. Democrats do identity politics. The GOP needs flood media in cheap places with pivot issues (guns, abortion, etc).

Pretty sure Trump does identity politics. Examples are claiming the NFL protests are about disrespecting the flag, comments about Mexicans, a lot of shots at China, etc.

Trump != GOP. He is a game show host and parasite.

The base voters who show up are people who value specific issues like abortion, taxes, guns, etc and a red line that cannot be crossed.

Compare that message to the gotv efforts for democratic candidates. They’ll target ethnic voters, women, unions, lgbt, etc with messages specific to them. Depending on where they are, Democrats will stay silent on abortion or guns.

It’s a big reason why voter suppression is such a priority for the GOP. When there aren’t enough old white people, it’s expensive and difficult to convince gays or African Americans to flip.

I live in a very democratic state, and my little city probably has 30 polling places open from 6am to 9pm on Election Day with hardly any wait time.

GOP definitely pushes identity politics, just the identies they claim to represent are frequently not actually oppressed or are the majority:

Some tropes:

* "Real" rural Americans vs city dwellers

* Oppressed Christians vs atheists and Muslims (despite both being a tiny minority nationally vs the majority Christians)

* blacks and Hispanics vs their majority white base

* College educated vs uneducated (somehow ignoring the party elite and backers frequently have elite educations)

* Gun owners vs everyone else

I cynically believe many people, including the GOP national leadership, realize these are much more manufactured than oppression faced by actual opressed minority groups. But stirring up culture wars provides a great smoke screen for their agenda while fracturing socially or racially what would otherwise be natural opposition to their policies among class lines.

See: GOP rallying the rural poor and elderly against ACA, despite the two groups being some of the biggest groups on Medicare/caid

Trump is 100% GOP. You don't vote for him in the primary and general elections then get to claim "oh, he doesn't represent us really".

And yet, I know a half dozen people doing just that right now. :/

Especially when every policy he's pushing is a bog-standard GOP policy (even if they've been a lot more polite and dogwhistled them rather than outright screaming.)

I don't really get the identity politics thing. Aren't all politics identity politics?

Conservative Christian right wingers might have trouble in diverse workplaces but pot smoking gays are in deep shit anywhere outside of some coastal strongholds which ran out of places for newcomers years ago, oddly enough in part because of pervasive acceptance of neoliberal economics.

Oh, no. Identity politics is limited to issues specific to an individual's identity, as opposed to politics of nationalism, economics, broader social issues, etc.

It's just another word the right has latched on to in order to sound more intelligent, c.f. "cultural marxism". It's the same as people who throw around words like "Social Justice Warrior" as if that's a bad thing and make critiques of feminism without having actually taken even a second to read feminist literature on topics like intersectionality. It's the age of buzzwords. Ironically, caring about "identity politics" is identity politics as well, but the people using the term will still feel holier-than-thou and pretend they're rational, impartial, impassionate, and indifferent beings.

Another commenter mentioned your tone, but you're right about what I think is your general point, identity politics is a political codeword for the "catering to the needs of minorities" that specifically democrats and other leftists do, not politics tied to any identity, which sort of includes a lot of politics in general.

There’s that word “just”, here used to broadly denigrate anyone who might have an issue with how those topics are approached in the real world.

Not very conducive to discussion, and quite ironic in a thread about divisive echo chambers.

Thankfully you policed my tone instead of being constructive to the discussion.

Tone and lack of respect for the person being conversed with is one of many reasons politics have become so divisive - let's not pretend it isn't important when the topic is constructive discussion.

It's hard to look at the current media landscape and think the big problem is takeover by conservative news agencies.

What world are you living in? There is one conservative tv network in the US, and five left-wing networks.

There is the Sinclair Broadcast Group they own many small stations and will benefit from this change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

They have been buying up local stations for years. They then use that influence to push conservative ideas.

Please don't do this here.

You have a non-partisan read on what happened here, then? I mean, sorry: this is an inherently political news story and discussing it without reference to politics just isn't going to be productive.

Non-partisan read is that in a world where radio stations and newspapers are irrelevant, it’s a waste of everyone’s time to have these regulations.

Also, consolidation is a cross-cutting economic problem the DOJ’s antitrust division should be handling. It’s outside the FCC’s expertise.

The FCC's mandate is to regulate communication, how is radio communication ownership outside of its jurisdiction?

Radio and television are extremely relevant to most Americans. It's only those of us in our Bay Area-Chicago-New York bubbles that think they aren't. Decreasing market share does not mean irrelevance.

Radio alone is extremely influential for political opinions. Many politicians owe their careers to Rush Limbaugh and Neil Boortz.

Curated news stories that omit one perspective will certainly influence their audiences: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-07-20/the-sincl...

> The FCC's mandate is to regulate communication, how is radio communication ownership outside of its jurisdiction?

In the same way consolidation among trucking companies is outside the NTSB's jurisdition. The FCC's legitimate purpose is to prevent interference among radio and TV stations. It's not to regulate content (which isn't a legitimate area of regulation at all). And it's not to enforce antitrust laws (which are enforced by a different government agency, with specific expertise in antitrust).

The fact that radio is influential in politics among a certain segment of the population is even more reason for the FCC to steer clear, not a reason for the FCC to intervene.

>In the same way consolidation among trucking companies is outside the NTSB's jurisdition.

If the NTSB licensed trucks, and there was only enough road space to license 100 trucks per city, I'd be perfectly fine if they decided that 50/100 trucks had to be locally owned.

Usable radio frequencies are a limited resource, we have a vested interest in allocating those resources efficiently and fairly. The argument is what constitutes efficiently and fairly.

Is it fair to award licenses to the highest bidder? How about the tallest station owner?

Regardless of how they allocate licenses, they are still making a choice that determines who gets access and what viewpoints are represented.

I see no intrinsic reason that "highest bidder" is any more fair than "lives within 100 miles of the radio station."

How is changing existing regulations in the favor of a specific partisan group "steering clear" of that group? That's downright Orwellian phrasing there.

Regulating an area (ownership of TV and radio stations), because the FCC worried about how the ownership will affect viewpoints expressed by those radio and TV stations, is not a legitimate exercise of the FCC’s authority (or, for that matter, any government agency’s authority). Getting rid of those regulations is “steering clear” of the problem created by exercising the FCC’s licensing authority as a means for influencing viewpoints expressed in the media.

The fact that getting rid of hose regulations might help any particular group is besides the point. To the extent that those regulations were based on an attempt to influence viewpoints, they were not legitimate to begin with.

How are radio stations irrelevant? Nearly everyone I know with a 9 to 5 job listens to talk radio on the way to work. Either WSB for conservatives, or NPR for liberals.

Conservative talk radio in particular plays a huge part in conservative political culture.

Do what? Note that this is an accurate description of the media landscape in other English-speaking countries which have chosen to relax cross-ownership rules.

I get why you say this, but it matters for business. Good luck when the local network provider/media cartel decides they don’t like you.

Back in March, 265 members of congress voted to reverse an FCC privacy rule [0] in exchange for bribes (whoops, it's called lobbying). I'll leave it to you to figure out whether they had a "D" or an "R" next to their name. Then after that, tell me with a straight face that this isn't a partisan issue or that both sides are just the same.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp...

I get that you want to avoid political flamewars, but sticking your head in the sand about why things are happening as they are doesn't help anyone.