The political narrative is shifting. Revolution is in the air; Republicans are engaged in what is, arguably, a coup. Democrats are taking stock. In the background of all this, the historical view of the Old Right giving way to the New Right, the New Right’s failure to deliver on its ideological promises, and its subsequent fall to the Alt-Right (MAGA/Tea Party) has become a common theme in mainstream political analyses. But even people who acknowledge that chain of events seem to find the magnitude of the MAGA movement’s historical discontinuity disorienting. One weird new wrinkle is that, if the Alt-Right is engaged in a rebellion, then the Democratic Party — the party of the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Violence Against Women Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights, marriage equality, labor unions, and Obamacare — suddenly finds itself being pushed to play the unaccustomed role of the political establishment. Thus our nine year campaign to sell ourselves as “the adults in the room,” while desperately trying to ignore the fact that the room is simultaneously on fire, underwater, inundated with microplastics, dominated by fascists, and that eggs in the room go for a dollar apiece.
The American left has almost no tools for filling this role. We should stop trying. Not only is it not our political brand, but the elements of the Democratic Party that are best prepared to step up as authority figures are also the most compromised, and least trusted groups within the party, and maybe the country. This is to some extent a natural byproduct of them being the last establishment elites standing. For decades, Democratic and Republican elites played off each other to justify voting toward a consensus center-right agenda. Republican elites told their voters that they genuinely believed in overturning Roe v Wade, and unfettered gun ownership, war with communism, Christian identity movements, and so on. Of course they were lying, but they excused their inaction by blaming Democrats for blocking efforts to pass the vital legislation that would make those changes possible. Democratic elites, by sharp contrast, were often noncommittal on ideological issues. Instead they campaigned on the idea that moving too fast on social justice issues would hand elections to the scary, abortion-banning, gun-loving, racist, extremist Republicans. Establishment Republicans came to power by offering voters what they wanted and then not giving it to them; establishment Democrats got power by threatening progressives with the Alt-Right, and actually giving limousine and latte liberals what they wanted (inaction on progressive principles) but were too ashamed to ask for. The Republican tactic turned out to be more popular, but less sustainable. Republican voters staged an insurrection against their leaders in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Their elites were totally overthrown, the Alt-Right took over, and swept to victory in local and state elections on a platform of terrifying right-wing populism, while Democrats just kept working the same old playbook.
What this means to voters now is that the Democratic establishment has broken its single, long-standing promise to the progressive left; that their milquetoast, do-nothing, center-right agenda would at least prevent the toxic bloom of far-right radicalism. This failure means that the elite faction that has led the Democrats for 40 years has lost all trust and credibility at exactly the moment when the party needs leadership. Meanwhile large numbers of formerly centrist “liberal” donors, particularly in the tech sector, have declared they were for “classical liberalism,” (aka laissez-faire) all along, and have gone over en masse to provide centrist cover to the fascists. Now the shattered American left and center-left have to find a way to unite against the threat from the right, or go the way of the Weimar Republic, and all the other historic moderates who couldn’t get their shit together when authoritarian dictatorships came knocking in the wee hours of the night.
Like every other jerk on the Internet, I have some ideas about how we can pull together. I’ll try to distinguish myself by keeping them brief:
Campaign like Republicans don’t exist.
Start from the premise that we are facing a bunch of real problems, some of them actually, non-metaphorically, existential in scope. Put together an integrated platform for addressing those problems that will excite voters. Aim for what we think voters will be for, not what we think politicians won’t be against.
Don’t worry about trying to capture Republican moderates, or undecideds. Anyone who’s watching Trump let Musk into the Treasury computers and still thinks the Green New Deal is a step too far isn’t someone we can convince of anything.
By the same token, don’t let centrist Democrats and fossilized pseudo-centrist hacks like George Will convince us that setting out to do great things will somehow make everything worse. We’ve been listening to these schmucks for decades — and yet, everything is worse. The old theory that we can create a lasting and virtuous peace by not making any sudden movements that might scare people who already hate us has been thoroughly tested in the real world and proven to be about as effective as trickle-down economics. Time to experiment with the radical notion that trying as hard as we can to make things better might actually make things better.
We want 100,000,000 votes in 2028. People want jobs, housing, economic security, fair courts, safe streets — tons of totally reasonable stuff they don’t currently have. We can make it happen.
Support new candidates.
Fair or not, nobody trusts the Democratic establishment anymore. The biggest PR blitz in history couldn’t rehabilitate their image in the time frame necessary to prevent the country from sliding into a fascist dictatorship.
Democratic elites should recognize that their role now is to support a new cohort. That’s not an unreasonable thing to ask from people in their 70s and 80s. Elites who can’t read the memo for whatever reason should be marginalized. Not because we need to purge dissent; we just don’t have time to argue with them.
The rest of us should be willing to take chances. I know a lot of people are scared right now, and when we’re scared, we want reassurance. We want Joe Biden. We want Obama to have a third term. We want someone we know. Those of us who feel that way need to recognize that as much as we want reassurance, others want change. And the people who want change have a better argument.
Set aside time, in our personal lives, to occasionally check the universal human tendency to worry without taking action, and to act without worrying. Try the following exercise:
Picture what you think you’ll have after four years of the current administration: your voting rights, your right to bodily autonomy, your job security, your personal security, your health insurance; air that’s safe to breathe, water that’s safe to drink. All of it. Call that Value Y.
Picture what you had nine years ago. Call that Value X.
Subtract Value Y from Value X. Call the remainder Value Z. That’s what you think MAGA is going to cost you by 2028.
Get your head around the question of whether or not you’re willing to spend Value Z to annihilate the MAGA movement for the next three and a half years. If you’re not willing to spend that much, ask yourself why. Do you not have confidence in your assessment of Value X? Value Y? If not, why not? Figure out what Value Z really is, then spend some time making peace with the idea of throwing all of it at the problem we’re facing right now.
That’s it.
Are you ready?
Okay. Let's roll.