The purple-haired bisexual unicorn myth of identity politics...

 Maureen Dowd asks, (my paraphrase)

What good does it do the Dems to have lost the working-class soul of their party if ultimately, nobody can figure out the identity-politics riddle of what the mythical purple-haired bisexual Senator needs to move ahead with the pack?

In the end, maybe the Dems will learn that underneath all the identity politicking, the old standards and values should not have fallen, just the way they were unjustly enforced and policed.  

Party identity still matters -- although too many ethnics and non-white-collar workers have fled where they were unwanted and criticized for being "white", Christian and self-reliant. *

If they thought herding cats was hard, it's almost amusing -- except for the stakes -- watching our elders like Nancy, Chuck and Joe trying to herd a purple-haired unicorn into their mix...

The Arizona senator’s name is pronounced “cinema,” and it is apt because she sweeps — and sometimes, when the triathlete has a sports injury, limps — through the Senate like a silent film star.

“The Greta Garbo of Congress,” as one top Democrat called her.

Sinema rarely gives interviews and shuns the scrum of reporters at the Capitol. But she is not shy about drawing the spotlight, whether she is swathed in fur stoles, bedecked in pink, purple and mint-colored wigs, bedazzled in glittering stilettos. It is hard to believe that the Senate had a nutty sexist ban on sleeveless outfits on the floor. But the mandarins quit worrying about it for members once their colleague blithely turned the hallowed marble halls into an iconoclastic catwalk.

Sinema’s more conservative — and monochromatic — colleagues were agog at her stylings when she first ascended to the Senate — a moment when she was celebrated as the first openly bisexual senator. And they were appalled this past year when her fashion statements included presiding over the Senate in a pink sweater reading “Dangerous Creature” and when she put a picture on Instagram, following her defiant thumbs down on a $15 minimum wage, sporting a hot pink newsboy cap, matching oversized glasses and a ring that expressed the sentiment “Kiss off,” but in a more vulgar way. (Remember that this is a town so strait-laced, it was a sartorial scandal when President Barack Obama donned a tan suit.)

Sinema enjoys poking the bear, especially the more righteous wing of her party, but her allies cry sexism in the way she is treated by Democrats, compared with Manchin.

“I don’t think that in her mind, when she dyes the front of her hair purple or whatever she does, she’s trying to get press attention,” one told me. “Frankly, it’s just an expression of who she is.”

While progressives may disdain Joe “I’ve Never Been A Liberal” Manchin, they understand that he has a record as a conservative Democrat; Sinema is a puzzle to them.

Live by the exciting diversity traits, die by them too then.  The idea of simply electing the best qualified people who understand what the job is and how to best get it done under the current circumstances is as passe as electing someone without consideration for their genitals, skin color, or pretty-people stylings either.

Maybe save the fashion statements for the non-work day? We really need the ugly, boring competent people to be represented at the top now, because all the Beautiful People whom Diversity promotes often have no clue what the job is they are supposed to be doing.  Not in the military, higher education, or politics.  

Don't believe me?  Ask former community organizer Barack Obama how things are going in Michelle's former hometown...

It's not enough to just "lift" select diverse people out.  Somebody has to stay behind and help the survivors, while the pretty people party and celebrate their selective wins.  The rest of the nation is pretty much woke to the results of the Diversity class winners though...

It's not the purple-haired unicorns you should be most concerned about anymore, I don't think. Harmless they are.

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* The abandoned, ethnic working-class -- with American citizenship papers -- made a home in the new Republican party, focusing on domestic issues like the dilution of citizenship, worker-protection, and voting rights; and less on unrealistic, elite old Republican values: using the US military to remake the world as a safe space for global business interests while testing out new military technologies in real-time combat situations; and using social issues and increased competition for healthy natural resources at home to divide us.

It's the evil flipside of cheney/bush's "United We Stand" propaganda: 

divided and displaced, as a nation, we're falling...