He didn't equate those things. His argument is not that both parties are equally bad. It's that neither party is one he feels he can support. He writes:
"This is about the point where some (most likely some in my own business) will scream: 'Both sidesism!' That’s the now-cliche argument that any criticism of Democrats whatsoever must be some kind of journalistic reflex to equate the parties, when clearly one is worse than the other."
"One is worse than the other. But that doesn’t mean we have to feel jazzed about supporting a party that would grade our worthiness as people on a sliding scale of identity. It doesn’t change the fact that the broad center of the American electorate — traditional conservatives and liberals both — no longer has a political home."
The problem is that he is just factually wrong; aside from his characterization of the parties being based on the fallacy that you can paint a coherent stable anthropomorphism of a broad coalition and have it approach meaningfulness, the idea of a “broad center of American politics” is bullshit. Political views are strongly bimodal, and differences from those modal points are more in areas outward from the axis between them than along it and between the modes.
The era where bipartisanship was more common during the last three or so decades of the long post-WWII (through mid-1990s) realignment wasn't because of a stronger center, it was because a very similar distribution of viewpoints as today was distributed between parties who weren't clearly aligned against each other on the main axis between the major factions; so you had the same recognizable liberal and conservative factions, with “liberal Republicans” and “conservative Democrats” being substantial factions. Historically and structurally this is an aberrant situation, the parties tend to align against each other on the major ideological axis of divisions in the countries. But things got shook up by the New Deal (and later public welfare programs) and then a series of Civil Rights measures that didn't quite fit the existing partisan alignment, and they came hard and fast enough that it took an unusually long time for the new alignment to shake out...
Now, there is a broad disenfranchised group, but it's not mainly the “center”, it's a diverse group of people whose views fall in a variety of places not near the axis between the major parties; in a system which supported more viable parties having a meaningful role in the political systems, they’d be served by their own parties; as it is now they are either protest voting or voting with whichever major party seems least bad at the moment and not liking it much, and in many cases being hyper-targeted by propaganda from the other major parties side not aiming to engage their interest, but to alienate them from the major party closer to their interests (or electoral politics generally) as part of the zero-sum nature of the two-party system.
Despite his protestations, he was definitely engaging in false equivalence. Kendi's work is not the platform of the Democratic party (especially not the cherry-picked version he was talking about).
Democrats have their own far out wing, but unlike Republicans, they do not own the party. That comes at a substantial price: a significant chunk of their loss in 2016 came from being unable to engage their own far-left wing with a candidate they felt was too far to the right.
He would love a party that represents exactly his views, without having to compromise on any issue or work with people who disagree with him on any point. Congratulations. Welcome to the group called "everybody". Meantime, those who would like to actually work at governing the country try to find positions that people can tolerate, even though practically nobody loves them.
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He didn't equate those things. His argument is not that both parties are equally bad. It's that neither party is one he feels he can support. He writes:
"This is about the point where some (most likely some in my own business) will scream: 'Both sidesism!' That’s the now-cliche argument that any criticism of Democrats whatsoever must be some kind of journalistic reflex to equate the parties, when clearly one is worse than the other."
"One is worse than the other. But that doesn’t mean we have to feel jazzed about supporting a party that would grade our worthiness as people on a sliding scale of identity. It doesn’t change the fact that the broad center of the American electorate — traditional conservatives and liberals both — no longer has a political home."
The problem is that he is just factually wrong; aside from his characterization of the parties being based on the fallacy that you can paint a coherent stable anthropomorphism of a broad coalition and have it approach meaningfulness, the idea of a “broad center of American politics” is bullshit. Political views are strongly bimodal, and differences from those modal points are more in areas outward from the axis between them than along it and between the modes.
The era where bipartisanship was more common during the last three or so decades of the long post-WWII (through mid-1990s) realignment wasn't because of a stronger center, it was because a very similar distribution of viewpoints as today was distributed between parties who weren't clearly aligned against each other on the main axis between the major factions; so you had the same recognizable liberal and conservative factions, with “liberal Republicans” and “conservative Democrats” being substantial factions. Historically and structurally this is an aberrant situation, the parties tend to align against each other on the major ideological axis of divisions in the countries. But things got shook up by the New Deal (and later public welfare programs) and then a series of Civil Rights measures that didn't quite fit the existing partisan alignment, and they came hard and fast enough that it took an unusually long time for the new alignment to shake out...
Now, there is a broad disenfranchised group, but it's not mainly the “center”, it's a diverse group of people whose views fall in a variety of places not near the axis between the major parties; in a system which supported more viable parties having a meaningful role in the political systems, they’d be served by their own parties; as it is now they are either protest voting or voting with whichever major party seems least bad at the moment and not liking it much, and in many cases being hyper-targeted by propaganda from the other major parties side not aiming to engage their interest, but to alienate them from the major party closer to their interests (or electoral politics generally) as part of the zero-sum nature of the two-party system.
On the R side, he points to the total collapse of the American republic. On the D side he points to a guy that wrote a book he didn't like.
That is equating them. He is presenting the chief arguments why neither faction represents him, both leading to the same conclusion.
Despite his protestations, he was definitely engaging in false equivalence. Kendi's work is not the platform of the Democratic party (especially not the cherry-picked version he was talking about).
Democrats have their own far out wing, but unlike Republicans, they do not own the party. That comes at a substantial price: a significant chunk of their loss in 2016 came from being unable to engage their own far-left wing with a candidate they felt was too far to the right.
He would love a party that represents exactly his views, without having to compromise on any issue or work with people who disagree with him on any point. Congratulations. Welcome to the group called "everybody". Meantime, those who would like to actually work at governing the country try to find positions that people can tolerate, even though practically nobody loves them.