Democrat Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told her party that “identity politics” needs to end if they want to have a chance to win back voters after losing the White House in 2024 to President-elect Donald Trump.
During a Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee briefing with Dem candidates who won their election, the soon-to-be senator from Michigan didn’t mince words when talking about why the party lost the White House.
“I personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo,” Slotkin said, per David Weigel in a post on X. She also said that the party should take language “not from the faculty lounge, but the assembly line.”
At a post-election DSCC briefing with winning Dem candidates.
Elissa Slotkin: “I personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo.” Dems should take language “not from the faculty lounge, but the assembly line.”
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 19, 2024
The comments were similar to ones the incoming senator made during her appearance on MSNBC when asked about the party’s recent defeat.
“Any party — and I can only represent the Democratic Party — needs to focus on the things that keep people up at night. That’s their pocketbooks and their kids,” Slotkin said. “There are a lot of issues out there. But you’ve got to start with what keeps people awake, and that is kitchen-table issues, economics.”
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“We gotta stay away … we don’t need to obsess about identity politics,” she added. “And by the way, this last election demonstrated very clearly that they don’t stand up.”
Despite Slotkin’s comments about “identity politics,” she voted multiple times against keeping men out of women’s restrooms and locker rooms, the Detroit News noted.
In May 2019, during her first term in Congress, Slotkin voted for the Equality Act, which would, among other things, “prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”
It was stopped by Republicans in the Senate, then passed again in 2021, with Slotkin voting for it, the outlet noted. In April 2023, Slotkin also voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which “prohibits school athletic programs from allowing individuals whose biological sex at birth was male to participate in programs that are for women or girls.”
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