Ganondagan
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2024
- Messages
- 6,753
- Reaction score
- 2,611
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Right
I think a lot of liberals are recognizing they've lost touch with the average American voter. I don't know why it has taken so long but Trump's win may have finally shaken them up. The Democrat narrative was soundly rejected.
For years, I and many others have been warning liberals and progressives who defined themselves by embracing identity politics over material economic concerns, by touting America and Americans as the root of all evil, by portraying themselves as the occupiers of “the right side of history,” and who smeared those who didn’t buy into their program as ignorant, racist wretches.
We’ve been warning them: Keep at it, and your political base is going to shift out from under your feet. The “wretches”—some of whom used to be Democrats—are going to take their votes and their campaign contributions elsewhere. The “people of color” who you run to with your hand out every two years are going to realize you have nothing to offer in return except the hollow claim that “the other guys are worse.” We said, if you don’t rethink your political program, it will be the end of you.
This election may not mark the end for the Democratic Party, but I don’t think anyone can look at the results and say I was wrong. To be sure, there are many factors contributing to Trump’s win. Alienation from the Democratic Party can’t account for all of his success. But it may account for the narrow difference between a win and a loss.
And yet, what do we see in the aftermath? We see Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, refusing to admit that her party had any hand in its own defeat. We see angry progressives blaming the wretches for rejecting the party that has done nothing but mock them. We see very little of the soul-searching that one would expect among party leaders after losing two branches of the government in one election. In this clip, Daniel Bessner argues that the Democrats’ failure is a sign of liberalism’s exhaustion. It has, he says, nothing left to offer. I don’t know if he’s right about that. But if Kamala Harris is the best the Democrats can do, he’s not wrong.
Liberalism's Exhaustion
We’ve been warning them: Keep at it, and your political base is going to shift out from under your feet. The “wretches”—some of whom used to be Democrats—are going to take their votes and their campaign contributions elsewhere. The “people of color” who you run to with your hand out every two years are going to realize you have nothing to offer in return except the hollow claim that “the other guys are worse.” We said, if you don’t rethink your political program, it will be the end of you.
This election may not mark the end for the Democratic Party, but I don’t think anyone can look at the results and say I was wrong. To be sure, there are many factors contributing to Trump’s win. Alienation from the Democratic Party can’t account for all of his success. But it may account for the narrow difference between a win and a loss.
And yet, what do we see in the aftermath? We see Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, refusing to admit that her party had any hand in its own defeat. We see angry progressives blaming the wretches for rejecting the party that has done nothing but mock them. We see very little of the soul-searching that one would expect among party leaders after losing two branches of the government in one election. In this clip, Daniel Bessner argues that the Democrats’ failure is a sign of liberalism’s exhaustion. It has, he says, nothing left to offer. I don’t know if he’s right about that. But if Kamala Harris is the best the Democrats can do, he’s not wrong.
