The Democratic Party is in crisis. In his three campaigns with Donald Trump, he lost one, lost another narrowly, and then lost more decisively than the first. Trump’s recent victory saw more than 90% of counties across the country shift in his direction. Now, those on the left are scrambling to diagnose what’s troubling the party and offer prescriptions.
A group of center-left commentators and party operatives has rallied around a diagnosis that can be summarized as “the woke have lost it.” The set argues that social justice activists, who focus on identity-linked oppression, have significant influence in the Democratic Party and helped disrupt Harris’ campaign. Working class people advocate for defunding the police, transgender rights, reparations for Black Americans, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, campus “cancel culture,” diversity, equity and inclusion programs, They argue that they are being marginalized by issues such as evolving scholarship. -Sounds like jargon surrounding these issues. The solution, many of them imply or explicitly say, is for Democrats to become more socially conservative and stop expanding into “identity politics” and social justice advocacy. are.
The “woke people lost it” narrative relies on the depiction of a fanciful presidential campaign that never existed.
This story is fascinating to many veterans of the Democratic Party establishment, which has long had an instinct to emulate the right when times get tough. But this story is mostly wrong. It is based on a fictional account of the past, some indefensible analytical leaps, and a scapegoat that is easily debunked. A more careful reading of the facts helps explain how a complete pivot to economic populism could benefit the party.
The “woke people lost it” narrative relies on the depiction of a fanciful presidential campaign that never existed. Harris didn’t run to throw money at police, identity politics or niche social justice issues. Harris touted his track record as a former tough-on-crime prosecutor. She virtually never mentioned her racial or gender identity. On the high-profile immigration issue, Harris has promised to enact the most restrictive immigration and border policies in decades. She also distanced herself from the trans community, refusing to take a clear position on the question of whether transgender Americans should receive gender-affirming care in this country. Harris was elected primarily on a combination of positive vibes, an unusual “opportunity economy” program, a promise to uphold international order, and a pledge to defend democracy, civil rights, and normalcy. Harris’ efforts come after Biden ran a defensive, visionless campaign that relied almost entirely on fears of Trump’s reelection, never coming close to being coded as “woke.” It was done. In short, there was no evidence that niche activists were controlling the party.
Some supporters of “woke people are lost” say 2019-2020 is a good starting point for understanding where Democrats went astray. At the time, Democratic candidates were competing on a number of progressive positions in the Democratic presidential primary, spurred by the George Floyd protests. A new norm of inclusivity. This is a weak argument for a variety of reasons. First of all, we know that most voters don’t follow the current election closely, that voters have short memories, and that the percentage of swing voters is low, yet the 2024 defeat happened six months ago. How can you vigorously claim that the event is to blame? -Informed voters?
Second, during that era, the Democratic Party did exactly what the “resurrectionist” camp wanted. Most Democrats rejected the social justice movements that tried to influence the Democratic Party at the time, or took relatively moderate positions on the issues. And the party ultimately rallied behind a septuagenarian presidential candidate whose value proposition was that he was a centrist with no interest in new progressive goals. Biden opposed decriminalizing border crossing. Not only did he refuse to defund the police, he called for more funding for the police. He told donors that “nothing fundamentally changes” and boasted of working with racist senators. And while Trump made “cancel culture” a theme of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden ignored debates focused on identity, defended democracy, and took COVID-19 seriously. In response, he pledged to invest in infrastructure, clean energy, and manufacturing. Biden won even though the social justice movement was very prominent in American life. Years later, Harris, Biden’s vice president and successor, aligned herself with Biden’s non-identitarian style of politics and campaigned with neoconservative icon Liz Cheney, but her acceptance of How can you claim that you lost because of the decline of a style of social justice politics that never even existed?
To be fair, this election did have a moment of its own. Harris, who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, responded to a survey from the ACLU in 2019 in which she expressed support for providing gender reassignment surgery to transgender people in prison. (This is already the law, and as Harris pointed out during her 2024 campaign, it means prisons can provide gender-affirming services under the Trump administration.) Based on that response, Republicans will It ran attack ads against Harris in the 2024 cycle. While it’s true that Harris didn’t raise transgender issues at arm’s length during her campaign and didn’t make them a campaign issue, the Republican Party’s obsession with transgender issues may have influenced voters’ perceptions of her. may have influenced.
But it is impossible to defend the evidence that this issue is the only Democratic action. As my colleague Hayes Brown pointed out, transgender rights ranked low in the issue priorities survey. Multiple surveys and studies suggest that anti-trans advertising does not have a significant impact on voting choices. Moderate Democratic Senate candidates such as Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Rep. Colin Allred of Texas have not been saved in their 2024 races by moving to the right on trans issues. Meanwhile, overwhelming evidence from years of pre-election polling, issue priority surveys, international trends, and focus groups shows that Democrats, like incumbents in other democracies around the world, are losing voters’ interest in the economy primarily due to inflation. It is a loss of trust. As Thomas Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, points out, the support for Trump across many demographic groups across the country is consistent with this set of grievances. It’s a fairly homogeneous method. ”
In summary, “woke people lost it” proponents are revising history so they don’t have to admit that the Democratic Party just carried out their strategy and it failed catastrophically. That’s what I’m doing. Following their recommendations would mean repeating the same plans or becoming significantly more socially conservative. (Notably, this set of commentators is perhaps nervous about personally identifying which groups marginalized groups should not be a part of in 2028. , usually unable to explain how.) However, Democrats have not visibly yielded results from recent attempts to solve this problem. Immigration, the rightward movement of the police, etc. And this prescription ignores the reality that election data shows the party is not listening to the economic experiences of ordinary people. Many people don’t want to hear about the technical management of economic systems that they think need to be dismantled and rebuilt.
Democrats have a way to tap into both universalism and widespread dissatisfaction with the economy: aggressive economic populism. It exploits people’s class identities through class-first leftist politics that pits working Americans of all backgrounds against billionaires, big corporations, and the 1%. Under this paradigm, prejudice of all kinds is framed as a tool by elites to distract and insulate Americans from economic exploitation. On the contrary, anti-prejudice should be seen as the battle cry of freedom lovers and a weapon to keep the nation’s focus on class warfare. Economic proposals will not simply be about incremental improvements, but will cut costs and reimagine freedom through the provision of social democracy and the crackdown on corporate greed. Of course, this will cause some discomfort for the actually influential interest group that the “woke losers” crowd somehow always forgets to mention: the economic elite. But it will unite and excite people, paving the way for a freer life in all areas of life.
Democrats need to stop whining about social movements, which are a fact of political life. They should also stop implying that wealthy donors have power they don’t have, while ignoring how they shape the party’s economic policy. In reality, political leaders and political parties must constantly manage unruly coalitions and maintain a position distinct from interest groups while interacting with them. Mr. Trump has successfully distanced himself from the Republican coalition’s proponents of a national abortion ban, fooling many into believing he will protect Social Security in defiance of the instincts of the party’s fiscal hawks. As the ostensible party of social change and egalitarianism, the Democratic Party will always bear this burden of participating in the movement even more heavily than the Republican Party. But political parties must have an identity, and that identity must be based on economic sense. It’s time for the Democratic Party to wake up and build a true economic center for a party that hasn’t been able to establish a clear sense of self since the Reagan era.
