IGF CultureWatch

Progressives running the political organizing group Wellstone Action directed their energies toward “work with communities of color and the LGBTQI community.” When the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s sons raised the issue of focusing as well on economic issues and the plight of working class voters, they were ousted from the group.

Related: Democratic pollster Charles Cook recently wrote, “It’s not clear that Democrats fully understood why they lost the last presidential election and why their congressional gains were so paltry….” He added, “I met last week with leaders and members of a manufacturing union that was still livid over the Obama administration’s ‘war on coal’ that they believe put many of their members out of work or cut their hours,” and concludes, “A bit of self-reflection rather than just scapegoating might be in order.”

More. Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. is “done trying to understand Trump supporters”:

Besides which, is there really so much left to “understand?” Not from where I sit. Long before Trump even existed as a political force, many of us noted with alarm the rise of a backlash among right wingers deeply angry and profoundly terrified by the writing on the demographic wall. Said writing foretold — and for that matter, still foretells — the declining preeminence of white, Christian America.

A basket of deplorables, clinging to their guns and religion.

GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) reports that:

While the past several decades have yielded remarkable progress for the LGBTQ community in the United States, acceptance of LGBTQ people is slipping, and discrimination is increasing, in the face of attacks, bias, and erasure by the Trump administration. This is the first time the Accelerating Acceptance report has shown a drop in acceptance for LGBTQ people.

Even if you accept GLAAD’s finding of a drop in acceptance, here’s an alternative explanation to “Erasure by the Trump administration,” whatever Trump is Hitler hysteria that’s supposed to invoke. How about this: Forcing religiously conservative (but NEVER Muslim) small business owners to craft creative expressions for same-sex weddings seems to many Americans who are willing to live and let live as, well, ugly authoritarianism. Or that the federal government decreeing that public schools make restrooms and locker rooms open to use based on gender identity rather than anatomy seems to many who are OK with same-sex marriage to be an ill considered overstep.

And then there’s this.

The LGBT activist movement has squandered a great deal of goodwill. Blaming Donald Trump won’t restore it.

More. Andrew Sullivan has similar thoughts:

The mainstream media has no other explanation than, well, Trump, and a culture more tolerant of intolerance. That may well be part of it. But no one seems to notice the profound shift in the tone and substance of advocacy for gay equality in recent years, and the radicalization of the movement’s ideology and rhetoric. That is also surely having an impact. …

As many of us saw our goals largely completed and moved on, the far left filled the void. … “Live and let live” became: “If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.” I would be shocked if this sudden lurch in the message didn’t in some way negatively affect some straight people’s views of gays.

The left’s indifference to religious freedom — see the question of Masterpiece Cakeshop— has also taken a toll. So have the PC bromides of the LGBTQRSTUV reformulation.