November 9, 2024 - 5:00pm
Donald Trump in 2024 is going to be very different from the version who won eight years ago. The US President-elect will now be on firmer footing than in 2016 because he won the popular vote as well as the electoral college. Crucial to this were his gains with swathes of America’s working class, in particular those without college degrees.
The post-mortem for the Democrats is now underway as to how they lost so many of what they consider âtheir peopleâ. Bernie Sanders, whose Left-populist insurgency in 2016 was as much a manifestation of popular discontent with the domestic and foreign policy consensus as Trumpâs, was clear. âIt should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he wrote following Kamala Harrisâs defeat. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
Some liberal centrists are now willing to concede that perhaps a stagnant elitist Democratic Party needed Sanders to shake it into action, rather than sidelining him. For instance, David Brooks of The New York Times confessed this week that âmaybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption â something that will make people like me uncomfortable.â
The argument now is whether the Democrats should âmove Leftâ. They have to win working-class votes somehow, and that may well require a reformist economic agenda which is âpopulistâ and aims for working-class prosperity. They could champion an industrial strategy that creates new employment, a jobs guarantee, rent and price controls, investment in public transit and infrastructure, or tax cuts for the working class. Yet this would entail a fundamental recalibration of the partyâs ideology, away from progressive neoliberalism.
One possibility is that Democrats will instead triangulate to the Right â especially on immigration, crime and transgender rights â in order to compete with Trump on his own terrain, similar to Bill Clintonâs strategy during his 1992 campaign when he ran to the Right of George H. W. Bush in âgetting toughâ on crime. This is the scenario most likely to come about, given that the Democrats have been successfully tarred by the Republicans as the party of open borders, defunding the police, and radical gender ideology â even though this wasnât the reality of Harrisâs platform. And so party leaders feel they have to pivot to shake off those accusations.
Sandersâs rise was notable because he seemed to represent a resurgence of an old-school Leftism focused on class and the iniquities of capitalism, in contrast to the identity politics and cultural preoccupations that have tainted the Democrats in recent years. Perhaps Harrisâs defeat will provide an opportunity for this Leftism to develop. That would require the arduous task of building up civic-social institutions, such as trade unions and civic clubs, that have been worn away by social atomisation, so that working-class people can organise and maximise solidarity.
Yet, because of the failure of the Sanders insurgency to take over the Democratic Party, and the fractures within the party over the Gaza war, this Leftism will likely develop outside of the party rather than within it. Bernieâs moment is long gone, and a new generation has to rise to the task. But âthe Squadâ of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez et al. donât have the cache to attract the wide-ranging parts of the electorate that Sanders has. Their progressivism is noticeably distinct from Sandersâs Leftism, and is closer to a hardcore version of the âwokeâ ideology prominent within the party â which was rejected in favour of Trump. Whether this opportunity can be seized productively by a younger generation in a different direction is still an open question.
One doesnât have to agree with all of Sandersâs politics to understand that the Democrats could learn certain things from him. And they shouldnât have been so quick to write off a strategy and style that was actually succeeding in enticing many people who wouldn’t ordinarily give their party the time of day.
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.
buffsoldier_96
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeFYI, David Brooks did more than just about anyone else to kill the populist Bernie movement. Just thought I would throw that out there.
Trump and Republicans now represent the political center of America by absolute definition of a nationwide free and fair election, during which the will of the American people was clearly expressed and a mandate given. I say this as someone who did not vote for Trump.
Influential Democrats who will not accept this – those who are starting to push Alex Jones-like conspiracy theories such as âdark days ahead,â âthe death of democracy,â and who are otherwise cheerleading for the start of âthe Resistanceâ (formerly known as âinsurrect.ionâ before the events of this past week) on previously-respected news sites – are now the extremists, once again by definition of the nationwide election during which the will of the people was clearly expressed and a mandate given.
Will Democrats finally see that they need to start the long exodus back to the political center to become an acceptable political party for centrists once more?
That they need to retire the heated extremism and authoritarian bent to control those who do not think like them?
Will they now learn to appreciate the diversity in society, not just the university-selected groupthink that was transplanted into easily-influenced brains while living on Ivy League campuses?
They have a choice to make.
Letâs hope they choose the civilized path, rather than the path they chose in 2016 or that Trump reciprocated in 2020.
Were sensible Democrats in hibernation for the past 8 years because they so feared the Woke Left?
My own hypothesis is that the limited vision of influential and powerful Democrats is the outcome of voluntary tribalism that is policed and enforced by the âNarcissism of Small Differencesâ, as Freud defined it.
These pivotal Democrats have insulated themselves from much of America. They attend the same universities. They live in the same neighborhoods. They attend the same high society functions and neighborhood parties. They donate and bid at the same charity auctions. They work at the same companies. They read the same news sources. And their kids go to the same coming-of-age celebrations (e.g. birthday parties), the same summer camps, the same schools and they play the same sports.
Thus the normalized distribution curve of this highly homogenized population of powerful and influential Democrats within each localized city and across the nation is very tightly woven around the mean of the population.
This means that the two (or perhaps three) standard deviations to each side of the mean – that represent the range of âacceptable societal viewpoints and activitiesâ – are also clustered tightly together around the mean.
Taking a step back to view this tight distribution curve relative to the much larger normal distribution curve of all Americans, the standard deviations of the homogenized group of Democrats actually appear to have no distinction from the mean of their distribution curve. Thatâs how tightly controlled this tribe really is.
And their mean is situated to the left of the mean of the much larger distribution curve that contains the total population of Americans, as is evident by the outcome of the election, even in the face of so much favorable coverage and money and power plays from within the current Executive Branch to tip the scales to the Democratsâ advantage. They had every conceivable advantage, and yet they still came up short.
From a frame of reference coming from within their insular tribe, itâs quite understandable that these powerful and influential Democrats get grumpy when they see that a previously-friendly neighbor didnât place the âcorrectâ political candidateâs sign in their front yard. Or perhaps their previously-friendly neighbor forgot to bring a face mask to a neighborhood July 4th COVID Lockdown gathering (with each person making sure that everyone else at the gathering sees that they are dutifully standing six feet apart from the others). All according to the tribal rules of acceptable societal behaviors.
And should the previously-friendly neighbor dare to place the opposition candidateâs political sign in their front yard? To these Democrats, itâs akin to their neighbor being an actual Nazi Skinhead Russian Spy Traitor Deplorable. Simply because such an act goes so far beyond anything that theyâve ever experienced from within their tribeâs cocoon. Should one Democrat inconceivably dare to independently question a sacred platform of the party in their mind, they are very careful not to let on to their friends, and they are sure to chant the right party slogans even if these slogans contradict their internal moral compass and their budding doubts.
According to the Narcissism of Small Differences, those who associate within such homogeneous groups play extreme games of one-upsmanship. For example, which of them can exhibit to the group by the shedding of happy tears online, or by falling to their knees in an act of worship on national TV, or by the wiring of significant personal funds to a campaign, that they love Joe BidenâŠno, wait, I mean Kamala Harris the mostest of allâŠeven though everyone in the group was lavishing love and praise for Biden the day before as the bestest Presidents since JFK (with the exception of Obama). The tribe tightly police themselves (and their neighbors) to make sure everyone stays very close to their tribeâs self-identified mean of acceptable behavior.
In short, they allow themselves to be âprovincializedâ and evangelized through their own tightly-controlled socialization networks. They drink the Kool-Aid.
Democrats in such a localized tribal affiliation canât realistically comprehend that theyâre actually not the centrists and moderates that they think they are, based on their limited life experiences ⊠their views might even be accurately labelled as âextremistâ when considering the broader frame of reference of all Americans. This factual observation would in all likelihood shock such Democrats to the very core.
Great post.
I experience cries and anger of woke lefties over Kamala defeat in uk every day since Wednesday.
Many even with PHDs in science or medicine can not answer simplest questions like “why was Harris good candidate and Trump terrible one”?
They just “believed” in Kamala.
Even women keep spouting rubbish about “trans rights” and “poor Gaza”
These people are mentally ill.
Most likely.
When your job depends on having certain “approved” views most people will keep quiet.
I keep telling people in uk that West is now on a path similar to late communism.
You are no longer killed or in Gulag like under Stalin, but you will loose your job and your career if you openly contest another idiocy of the woke ideology.
Net zero, multi culti, mass immigration, Israel right to defence against Islamofascists, CRT, BLM, IQ of various cohorts all forbidden subjects.
The Overton Window has been smashed and broken to bits. The Republicans today look more like the Democrats under Clinton, with the exception of tariffs. The Democrats today look like a college activist group. Their policies are all over the map – support for proxy wars, free trade, open borders, state intervention in all aspects of life, and radical identitarian politics. Pick any policy developed by cloistered, pseudo academics and you will find Democrats.
Though a few years old, this cartoon from Colin Wright (“Reality’s Last Stand”) still resonates for many of us. His Substack is excellent.
Cartoon says it all.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard this “Overton Window” thing mentioned in the comments of UnHerd.
Your hope is misplaced, I am afraid.
It was the same in uk after Brexit vote.
Anger and all out attempt to reverse greatest democratic vote in history of uk.
Unfortunately, my now former, lefty friends only believe in democracy when election or legislation goes their way.
“given that the Democrats have been successfully tarred by the Republicans as the party of open borders, defunding the police, and radical gender ideology â even though this wasnât the reality of Harrisâs platform.”
This is a ridiculous statement. It wasn’t “Harris’s platform” cause she flip-flopped on every issue in a desperate attempt not to seem like an extremist. It absolutely reflects her views expressed at every point prior to her nomination, and it absolutely reflects the policies of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Americans know what Harris is (a leftist extremist) and voted against that. You can’t fool people just by changing your tune 180 days before the election.
Exactly,
pretending that Harris was not woke, lefty, DEI appointed parasite is what did Democrats in.
Let’s not forget that she was instrumental in electoral fraud by promoting Biden as mentally fit to be president.
As Trump said about Hilary Clinton: lock her up.
Which she should had been for use of illegal server to line her pockets.
The same applies to Harris, Pelosi and many others in Democratic party and government agencies.
“Lock them up”.
The trouble with calling Harris a ‘leftist extremist’ is that DEI, mass immigration, sexualisation of children and all the rest of it are not leftist at all. They are the policies and fetishes of a degenerate and parasitic millionaire class.
Itâs incredible, even in this short time, to look back at Harris and the Democrat campaign and see how bizarre it all was. All that money, the faux passion of Harris and the rising adulation of the media was so empty of just about everything that it ran out of energy, and direction, as soon as it began, having no idea of why it was even on its feet. One billion dollars does not make a political position. Thereâs a vacuum there waiting to be filled by every crack-pot idea and every carpet-bagger in town. Things may get a lot worse for the Democrats before they get better.
Great post.
Unfortunately in uk, against European trends, we have another five years of woke, lefty, BLM kneeling parasites in charge.
If it was not tragic, it would be hilarious how much money Labour government steals from hard working people to feed layabouts in NHS, civil service and education.
Still, anger and bewilderment of my lefty acquaintances who voted for Labour makes my life more bearable.
Well, you voted for them. When I say “you”, I of course mean “the British voters” rather than you personally, but Starmer’s lot did get a rather big majority….
No they didn’t. They won a (very) thin parliamentry majority.
I hope the days of the Uniparty are numbered and Reform do well in forthcoming local and any by elections.
Oh. And here was me thinking that Labour had a 150+ seat majority.
a rather big majority
20% of the vote is hardly that. Labour won because the right wing vote was split.
And sadly looks like remaining split unless either the Tories or Reform can reduce the other to irrelevance.
I had some hopes that if Jenrick had won the Conservative leadership, an accommodation with Reform might have been possible thus bringing the ousting of Labour within reach. I canât see that happening under Badenoch.
So Reform will continue to keep a Labour PM in No.10. Fair enough.
….and the right wing vote was split because Reform split it.
Ah, Bernie Sanders, the 4-home owning socialist. You gotta love the left.
Bernie Sanders is not a socialist, he is a social democrat a very different thing.
To the best of my knowledge, he owns three homes. One in Vermont, one in DC – both necessary to his role as a senator. He also owns a summer home.
His net worth of is estmated at $2-3m – more than most but not a lot for someone who has been earning a Senator’s salary for decades and the majority of which would be bound up in those three homes.
The Democrats have a fundamental misunderstanding about Socialism or “Distributism.” Socialism is a cyclical spiral. It starts off as economic then goes cultural and then becomes “spiritual” as it begins to fail.
Socialism is NOT the opposite of Capitalism. “Progressive Capitalism” is a form of Socialism or cultural redistribution. Its method is the State working with Industry to redistribute cultural and economic (capital) across intersectional lines by favoring certain “marginalized” groups (Equity). Its Spreading out the gains in society within a market system. It’s a form of Social Engineering.
As the system of cultural redistribution begins to crack and poverty increases due to bad policies, it sparks a more animated spiritual cycle of spiritual of Woke or “Awakened Socialism.” This occurs when the Nihilism sets in and the Socialists begin to question the Economics but not the underlying values of “liberating the oppressed.”
The cycle then turns to the more Orthodox Marxism that Bernie supports and calls Democratic Socialism. Its just trying to return the Oppressor Oppressed binary back to the class paradox which blames everything on the wealthy. There are two main problems with this. First, it can’t produce because it devalues innovators. It turns out that competition is a natural function of life and by penalizing the most talented, you create less widespread growth in your economy.
Second, it can’t be Democratic. There is no way to do Socialism without imposing it. Dissent is an intractable problem for Socialism. If everybody isn’t on board its not possible to get people to comply with Universal projects. Furthermore, what if the population decides they don’t like Socialism? Can they vote themselves out of it? Well, no they can’t because now your “Democracy” only exists within a Sociak redistribution system. That’s why they say you can be a Socialist or a Communist in a Capitalist system but you can’t be a Capitalist in a Socialist system. The government will always reserve the right to seize and take over your business if it so chooses.
Woke was mainly pushed by the wealthy. They were fully on board with “cultural redistribution”. You’re blaming the people you are trying to defend and aggrandize.
How am I blaming ordinary people for anything? I reject the premise that ordinary people have their lives enhanced by constant government intervention in the economy.
If you want to complain about Anti-Trust we can talk but this idea that “The Wealthy” are the source of ordinary people’s problems is a Socialist Faith Article.
Even “economic Socialism” has always been a failure. I can’t say I really understand what “cultural Socialism” and “spiritual Socialism” are.
What on earth happened to the Thomas Fazi piece?? I started reading it (there was some pretty dubious stuff in there) then had to go out, and when I came back, the piece had been erased off the face of the earth. Has Thomas decided to pack it all in? Join a monestery in Tibet?
Could we be so lucky?
The old Democrats are no more. Trump stole their rational middle and combined it with the rational Republican middle, leaving them with only their “Progressive” wing and the p***y hats, who together, ironically, merged with the ultra-right-war-wingers! Without the p***y hats–who may be gone in 4 years if they take a step back from infanticide–the “Democrat” party is dead. Bernie and his “Progressives” needs to come out of the closet and stop hiding behind the “Democrat” label and just admit they are Socialists. If they feel so strong about it, they should have the balls to admit it.
I actually think Bernie does admit to being a “Socialist” (although I suspect that the term means something different in the US than it does in Europe).
No, he still calls himself a “democratic socialist” which is an odd term, distinct from both socialism and social democracy. But he seems far closer to the latter than the former.
Sanders wants to leave the market economy largely intact but remove its more exploitative elements also bring certain critical services (notably health) under public control. This is a mixed economy model and it clearly isn’t socialism – which would involve the nationalisation of all the major industrial sectors in America along with the displacement of the market by the state as an organising structure.
Note that wanting to take healthcare out of the hands of the market isn’t necessarily a staging post on the way to socialism because Americans already accept that the State should operate many critical aspects of the US economy, notably the military, and law enforcement, as well as a number of sectors where it dominates (education, the provision of infrastructure).
Only the most dedicated capitalists would wish to privatise the military or the judiciary, just as very few socialists want to nationalise the fashion or consumer electronics industries (for example). Most people accept some sort of blended model and it is unhelpful to conflate anyone who wants a bit more public control of sectors that have already failed under the present arrangements with “full” socialism. (Just as it is stupid to conflate voting for Trump with fascism).
Policy – what policyâŠ
The issue with the Dens is ideology- they lost all control in a purity spiral and with it the moderates by playing the identity game and attacking freedom of speech and expression.
Rather than looking to Bernie Sanders for their resurrection plan, the Dems should take a look at Sahra Wagenknecht.
Nothing will save the Democrats for 20-30 years. The identity nonsense, open borders, DEI, transgenderism, girls’ sport and their safe access to toilets, will bedevil the party. No working class parent or relative of women will trust them. It is somewhat like the Catholic Church’s dilemma with sexual abuse. Priests are not trusted no matter what changes come from the top and the same will occur with any policy changes from the Democrats. Any Party winning this election would see a decrease in inflation and a rise in wages after the Covid and Post Covid monetary tinkering. Trump’s fiscal changes will provide a good 8 years for Vance to continue Trump’s legacy.
“Priests are not trusted no matter what changes come from the top….” Unsurprising, as no changes are coming from the top.
Back in August I suggested that it’s worth revisiting the 1992 Democrat Platform. It’s still worth re-reading into today’s context. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1992-democratic-party-platform
And then wonder about who’s platform it sounds most similar to today… (Hint. It’s not current Democrats)
deleted
“Democrats have been successfully tarred by the Republicans as the party of open borders, defunding the police, and radical gender ideology â even though this wasnât the reality of Harrisâs platform.”
It most certainly was the reality of Harris’ platform, as can be seen from her policy positions prior to the Great Silence that descended upon her primary-less designation as the Democrats’ presidential candidate. That they wouldn’t DESCRIBE the platform publicly does not demonstrate that there was no platform. People knew that. It’s why she lost.
The “Move Left” and “Triangulate right” are not actually mutually exclusive here. Restricting immigration IS labour-left. Transgenderism is nonsense and not required for labour-oriented politics. Wokeism in general is antithetical to solidarity based labour.
It is somewhat ironic that the leading lights of the Trump resurgence contain a number of old time Democrats: Trump himself was a democrat for decades; then there’s Bobby Kennedy!; Tulsi Gabbard was the vice chair of the DNC and ran in the democrat 2020 primaries; Musk was an active democrat and even Tucker Carlson was very far from being a Republican.
The Democratic party has taken on the Republican neocon soul, and so this, it could be said, is a victory for the old time Democrats.
Surely no sensible person would lament the demise of “old-school Leftism”?
Much has been written about newspeak since Orwell. But one of the most infuriating examples of it is the flattening of everything to the economic, cultural and political left of the partisan divide into “socialism”, “far left” or “communism”. Bernie Sanders is about as far left as the US senatorial spectrum goes but he’s nowhere near the leftward end of the political spectrum, Kamala Harris isn’t meaningfully of the economic left at all but people call her a “literal communist” all the time because she adheres to woke precepts that would horrify a great many figures on the economic left. It is hard to imagine, the late Bob Crowe for example, recognising Kamala Harris a kindred spirit.
The other consequence of this is that it obscures the profound leftiness of positions that are popular in the population but politically homeless. The obvious examples here would be opposition to war and promotion of freedom of speech. We have now passed through the veil of “horseshoe theoary” and both of these topics now have a rightwing framing in the media – despite the fact that they were characteristic of left politics for decades.
Forget fixing the Democrats – or Labour (or the Tories/Republicans for that matter) fixing our politics means talking to each other and finding common ground with people with whom we disagree about other things. This is the opposite of centrism (which seeks to collapse everything down into a single palatable politcal position that is acceptable to all and demonising everything else). But our ability to do it is profoundly damaged by the failure to recognise the profound differences obscured by the term “left”.
“even though this wasnât the reality of Harrisâs platform. ” Uhm, except that it pretty much was, being a continuation of Biden.
Nul points, as they say at Eurovision.
Oh, and it’s “cachet” not “cache” – I suspect some idiot of a sub-editor can’t speak English.