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
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.)
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.
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.