Is anti-wokeness a winning election issue for Republicans?

[Farmlands]

Even if the answer is yes, it won't be for much longer.

The fact is that wokeness is on a decline.

Just wait for the natural reactions from left-wing places when the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, I'm nearly positive they'll prove this theory that wokeness is on a decline wrong very quickly.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Even if the answer is yes, it won't be for much longer.

The fact is that wokeness is on a decline.

Just wait for the natural reactions from left-wing places when the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, I'm nearly positive they'll prove this theory that wokeness is on a decline wrong very quickly.

For like two weeks maybe. And even that's not going to cause HR departments and corporate PR to decide that "rxndxm x's in wxrds" is the "proper" way to communicate or make sites like Everyday Feminism or various Breadtube channels even remotely relevant again.

Plus it's really not the same thing because affirmative action long predates modern wokeness. If the Supreme Court issued such a decision in 2003 you would've probably seen similar such reactions despite being long before contemporary "woke culture". The main difference is that thanks to Twitter and other social media the inevitable multitudes of cringe takes will be far more visible than they would've been in 2003.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I think it depends on what' meant by "anti-woke".

Americans still have a strong strain of social conservatism, and catering to that will reap some electoral rewards for at least another generation. But Republicans - led by their lying, bullying, grasping, cheating, philandering, greedy and venal orange Messiah - aren't particularly socially conservative these days (although as with many other things, they lie about it a lot). Respect for traditions, institutions, family, and values, along with a healthy skepticism about change, can be persuasive.

But when Republicans stoke hate and fear, assault our institutions, and claw for power while cloaked in hypocrisy, then some Americans see through their BS. There's a limit to how many voters can be fooled by  screaming "woke" and "CRT".

[Enduro]

I will just say that it is for me, but I care more about what republicans stood for more in the Obama era. I also respected the party more as they actually stood for important issues. Since the rise of the MAGA faction, and regression of their platform to mostly being anti-woke, they've definitely lost touch with a lot of what conservatism means. They allowed the left to paint an authoritarian caricature of their beliefs, and then revised it to be an even worse representation of themselves. All in all, the repetitive rhetoric is stale, my perception is a party that stomps their feet when they don't get what they want, and the R was more likely to get my vote 6 years ago

[VBM]

It would be if Republicans could actually suppress their own version of wokeness (aka evangelism)

[GP270watch]

The GOP can't really run on their old platform because increasingly voters don't believe it. They don't think tax cuts and budget deficits resolve themselves. People are more savvy about trickle down economics being bullcrap, and how the tax cuts the GOP passes really help the wealthiest Americans and are unnoticeable to just about everybody else. American foreign intervention is also wildly unpopular.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another example of how wokeness is on the decline: see how few people wear masks anymore and how mask mandates aren't even a policy with the Overton Window in most places at this point. As I've noted before it was mostly the woke side calling for such continued policies while the "unwoke left" basically just said to get vaccinated and then go back to your life.

[BlueSwan]

Certainly yes, if they can bait democrats into taking positions that are too woke and out of touch with the general public. I believe that a majority of americans will rather vote for a candidate that is deemed "too conservative" than one that is deemed "too woke", unfortunately.

So the key is to not let the online woke-mob define the democratic party. Right wing media is certainly doing everything they can to equate the two and democrats CANNOT take the bait.

Basically, democrats should just refrain from taking crazy positions or deny reality. Leave that to republicans. The democratic party needs to be the non-crazy party of decency and common sense.

Don't talk about how small kids should receive "gender-confirming" treatment, talk instead about how these delicate matters are not for the government to decide but for families and their trusted medical professionals to determine.

Don't talk about how there are no differences between men and women, talk instead about how important it is that we have equal chances of pursuing happiness in life.

Just don't talk about how actors should not portray somebody who they are not. Ever. Just don't do it.

I could go on forever.

[free my dawg]

Personally I think if Biden nominated Shontel Brown as VP her comments about trans people would counter DeSantis's woke accusations

[Meclazine for Israel]

Anti-wokeness is hard to quantify.

So no, I don't think it's a platform. It ends up destroying itself like most fads and you just keep the best parts.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I knew if wokeism took over, it would be a real damn problem, and I warned people about it a long time ago.

It is a cancer, and we need to stop its spread.

Wokeists have proven they don't care about the economy, civil liberties, or progress.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Depends on the issue. If “wokeness” is “slavery existed” and “don’t worry about gay teachers”, it’s not a winning issue for Republicans. If “wokeness” is “rioting is good”, it would be a winning issue for Republicans.

As I wrote about in another thread on this subject, liberals gleefully pretending that Republicans are against "allowing gay teachers to teach" or "teaching that slavery existed" is only helping the Republican cause.  There are vanishingly few swing voters willing to believe that Republicans actually want to teach that slavery never happened, so when liberals say things like this, voters just assume liberals are making a strawman argument to cover up what they're actually trying to do.

This is true, but it also cuts the other way: there's mounting evidence (most notably the 2022 midterm results) that Republican panic-mongering over things like kitty litter in school bathrooms or teachers trying to forcibly transition teens or teach kids that White People are evil aren't taken seriously by swing voters, and worse, can come across as attacks on public education in general (which they are FWIW), a resource that most families depend on, regardless of what they may think of the quality of the education their kids are receiving or the contents of the curriculum.

[Skill and Chance]

Yes somewhat, but it's close to played out now unless something like the summer of 2020 recurs in the near future.  In general, if you end up being the all social issues, all the time party, you lose (see 2006, CO-SEN 2014, 2016, VA-GOV 2021, etc.).   

[Pericles]

It's not about just being anti-woke and conservative or whatever, it's about Republicans framing it in a way that makes them look sane and normal-as Youngkin did-and not nasty and crazy like a certain orange man who cost them three elections.

[afleitch]

No.

It's clear they've started to overreach, and the mid terms showed that.

[DaleCooper]

It is, but it's not going to do much for them if they can't get past their own much worse positions on cultural issues.

[dead0man]

the answer is pretty freaking obviously "sometimes".  It's not a winning issue everywhere, but it certainly can be in certain races.  As always, good candidates beat bad candidates.  If a moderate (non-Trumpette) Republican ran against a super woke Dem in a purple district, the moderate Republican is going to win in any environment.  But a Pubby running on an anti-woke platform against a moderate Democrat is going to lose in all but the bluest of blue districts.

There is no one size fits all here.

[Vosem]

Yes somewhat, but it's close to played out now unless something like the summer of 2020 recurs in the near future.  In general, if you end up being the all social issues, all the time party, you lose (see 2006, CO-SEN 2014, 2016, VA-GOV 2021, etc.).   

Dunno; I think 'education' (especially) and 'race relations' issues have been pretty successful ones for the GOP to run on in the 2020s, which would've been unimaginable in (say) 2012. But I agree that the anti-gay stuff tends to be unpopular (and the anti-transgender stuff has not been successful electorally for the American right, although polling on the question is pretty scattershot), and in general most successful GOP campaigns stick to traditional issues like taxes and entitlements.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

No, and I don’t know how anyone can look at the results of the midterms and think otherwise.

Abortion rights, the economy, and protecting democracy are what voters care about, not whether teachers should be allowed to come out to their students or if there should be an age limit on drag shows. Just because a Libs of Tik Tok video goes viral doesn’t mean it’s automatically a national issue.

[Aurelius]

Like others have said, it obviously depends on what the wokeness and anti-wokeness in question is. The insane rhetoric from summer 2020 is going to keep hurting Dems for a long time to come. But GOP fringe talk about rolling back Lawrence or repealing the 19th amendment is just as repulsive and will also keep hurting the GOP for a long time to come. I'd like to see gender splits out of MI-3.

[Хahar 🤔]

Another example of how wokeness is on the decline: see how few people wear masks anymore and how mask mandates aren't even a policy with the Overton Window in most places at this point. As I've noted before it was mostly the woke side calling for such continued policies while the "unwoke left" basically just said to get vaccinated and then go back to your life.

Defining "wokeness" as "anything I don't like" is...actually not really wrong, even if it is really stupid, but the problem is that the things that BRTD doesn't like are probably not the same as the things that Republicans don't like.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Another issue here is that a lot of the "wokeness" that conservatives complain about, especially in media, aren't things that the government can actually do anything about. Even countries that have a Ministry of Culture usually don't go as far as dictating the racial backgrounds of the actors in superhero or fantasy movies (THAT AREN'T EVEN ABOUT REAL PEOPLE, MIND YOU) or requiring publishers to keep outdated children's books in print. Most instances you hear about of a book or movie being "cancelled" or "banned" are just the copyright holder deciding to remove it from publication or people on Twitter saying that it's bad.

I was skeptical that people are stupid enough to vote on this sh[inks], and it looks like I may have been proven right.

Now of course, there is a flip side to this, one that shows the two sides are locked in a symbiotic relationship. Let's take the fracas over the recent Little Mermaid Trailer. Even leaving aside the fact that the Little Mermaid is a fictional character and that Mermaids aren't even real, does casting a Black Girl to play Ariel actually do anything to advance Racial Equity or Civil Rights? At best, very, very little. It seems much more likely to be blatant pandering by Disney, and quite possibly deliberately courting controversy and criticism from the likes of Steven Crowder, The Quartering, Matt Walsh, and the other usual suspects, which will produce a counter-backlash, then a counter-counter backlash, etc, etc, resulting in people who might not have cared about the movie wanting to see it just to see what all the fuss is about. Disney seems to be locked into a pattern of producing increasingly bad "live action" versions of their animated classics, when the animated classics already exist and there's often little good reason why today's children wouldn't watch or enjoy them.

For all the people who get mad at Captain Marvel being a woman or the new Little Mermaid being black, or Rae in the Star Wars Sequels being an overpowered Mary Sue, there are just as many, if not more, people who just want to watch their popcorn movies in peace and be left alone, especially since we see the same anti-woke backlash year after year, and it just gets tiring, even among people who recognize corporate pandering for what it is.

[Dani Rose]

No, least of all when it's now the only part of their personalities. Americans are not nearly as into making life as bad as possible for marginalized people as the GOP thinks they are.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Another issue here is that a lot of the "wokeness" that conservatives complain about, especially in media, aren't things that the government can actually do anything about. Even countries that have a Ministry of Culture usually don't go as far as dictating the racial backgrounds of the actors in superhero or fantasy movies (THAT AREN'T EVEN ABOUT REAL PEOPLE, MIND YOU) or requiring publishers to keep outdated children's books in print. Most instances you hear about of a book or movie being "cancelled" or "banned" are just the copyright holder deciding to remove it from publication or people on Twitter saying that it's bad.

I was skeptical that people are stupid enough to vote on this sh[inks], and it looks like I may have been proven right.

While I agree with Vosem’s post in this thread (and also with his more recent description quoted below), it’s questionable that any GOP campaign or candidate can effectively harness this sentiment to get potential anti-wokeness voters to actually vote for them- as opposed to voting against some figment of the liberal PMC Twitteratti elite, or simply not turning out for Dems at all.

I think that it's still likely that turnout ultimately falls, as the trend of losing trust in institutions continues accelerating and eventually hooks people that, for one reason or another, would find supporting the actual Republican party unacceptable. (I think a cynical take on 'wokeness' would be that it is a movement designed to keep [racial] minorities or LGBTQ individuals with little institutional trust supporting political movements who are all about institutional trust.)