The Lesson of Sister Souljah
How to appeal to voters you don't agree with without making policy concessions
The “Sister Souljah” moment is such a legendary event in American politics that it is worth taking a moment to remember what it actually was. Bill Clinton, while campaigning for President in 1992, criticized a rapper few people ever heard of in a speech, singling her out for advocating that Blacks kill white people. And I hated it at the time, and basically still do. It had all the elements I recoil from- a wealthy Southern white politician critiquing a struggling Black artist for art he did not understand anyway. I also really liked rap music (still do) and was ticked off on that ground as well.
But while the incident still pisses me off, I have to admit I have formed a grudging respect for the maneuver. Because it answers one of the key debates within the Democratic Party: how to appeal to voters who disagree with the modern cultural politics of educated urban liberals without compromising the party’s commitment to minority groups? The answer to that question lies in Sister Souljah.
The thing to understand about Sister Souljah is that it hits the absolute sweet spot of political pandering: it managed to have absolutely no effect on the material condition of Black people (it even helped Sister Souljah’s career and brought more attention to rap music) while also hitting educated liberals exactly where it hurts, because they tend to believe that these issues of culture and language are extremely important and get very offended at symbolic losses. And every time a liberal complained about it, Bill Clinton must have smiled in self-satisfaction: that was exactly the point.
People often say that a politician needs a “Sister Souljah” moment, by which they mean a moment when a politician tells an uncomfortable truth to their base. But the reality is, politicians can get very far while never telling uncofomfortable truths to their bases: for instance, Republican politicians manage to get elected without telling extreme libertarians that they will never dismantle the social safety net and hardcore social conservatives that they will never reverse the sexual revolution or force mothers to stay at home and stay in bad marriages.
The real “Sister Souljah” moment is that sometimes a politician can use pure rhetoric to express symbolic solidarity with voters who disagree with that politician’s party base on cultural issues. So defined, President Obama was good at them: an example was when he said his own daughter shouldn’t get an affirmative action preference to go to college. This wasn’t an actual policy proposal: it was simply telling conservative and moderate voters who didn’t like affirmative action that he was with them and not the lefties who were pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion in every space they could. Another example was when he called Kanye West- who had a lot better reputation on the left then than he does now- a “jackass” for interfering with the presentation of an MTV award to a very young Taylor Swift. Again, this wasn’t a call to ban rap music or even criticism of the ideas expressed in West’s lyrics: it was just a cultural symbol, telling white voters that Obama didn’t hew to the left wing cultural position that Black people shouldn’t be criticized in their public disputes with white women.
All these examples are, of course, silly, not substantive, but that’s entirely the point. So much low information voter behavior is driven by the basic notion of who the voter likes. “Who would you like to have a beer with?” is a political cliche, but the notion that voters want to vote for someone they like or that shares their values is an obvious truth. Telling voters that you side with them and not with the elite minority on cultural issues is a way to get them to like you more.
And, importantly, those on the cultural left will object to this. That’s really part of the point. In Extremely Online lefty discourse, way, way too much attention is paid to language and not enough to substance and good arguments. So, for instance, when Joe Biden said that if you didn’t support him, “you ain’t Black”, that became a news story for a couple of days with massive condemnation, even though ordinary Black voters overwhelmingly supported Biden and didn’t care. People who spend their days thinking up clever language and carefully regulating what they and everyone else say can be counted on to get hugely outraged over any sort of symbolic diss, which in turn will generate news coverage about how they were dissed and were so upset. And that’s part of the victory: you not only tell voters that you understand their values, but you have the right people upset at you as well.
And you can do it WITHOUT making policy concessions. Without, for instance, having cut the welfare state or executed prisoners or imposed long prison sentences (where Bill Clinton’s actual politics were terrible). Obama governed as a very liberal President, but he was careful to send frequent signals to middle America that he understood their positions on cultural issues and identified with them, and not with the elite urban set.
How would this work in practice? Ross Douthat has some very good examples here. He singles out criticizing the use of the terms “Latinx” and “pregnant people”. “Pregnant people” is, in particular, a great target for this. A very tiny number of people are trans and pregnant. That’s a rounding error of the population. People who say “pregnant people” and not “pregnant women” are gaining no votes and losing, potentially, a lot. And the entire premise of saying “pregnant people” is silly anyway: the notion that the trans man, transmasc, and nonbinary population, which is highly educated, middle and upper class, and concentrated around universities and urban centers, don’t understand that reproductive health care serves them because a clinic says “pregnant women” is completely stupid.
So this makes this an absolutely awesome situation for a Sister Souljah moment- Democratic politicians can say that they stand with pregnant women and mothers, and that they stand against the people who want to force them not to use those terms. No actual people will be harmed by saying that, but it would send a huge message to all of the low information, moderate voters out there who disagree with the vanguard cultural project to deconstruct biological sex.
Democrats should look for other such opportunities as well. The alternative to moderating language is to moderate political positions; it should be entirely clear, especially to members of the Democrats’ well off, highly educated base, that the former is a preferable alternative.