After every election loss—among both Democrats and Republicans—we're treated to an argument about whether the loss was due to too much extremism or too much centrism. In the Washington Post today, Perry Bacon summarizes the lefty case for too much centrism in the 2024 race:
People who support defunding the police have almost no power in the Democratic Party. Centrists do. Center-left and establishment Democrats unified behind Joe Biden over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during the 2020 primaries and were largely supportive of him running for a second term until his dreadful performance at a June debate with Trump. Once Harris became the party’s candidate, she heeded calls from the center-left to run a moderate campaign, emphasizing the importance of the United States maintaining the “most lethal” military in the world and appealing to the wealthy and big corporations.
This is absolutely right. But it absolutely misses the point.
The problem is not that Democratic politicians are too woke. The problem is that too many of them refuse to clearly repudiate extreme wokeness.
"Defund the police" is as good an example as any. It's absolutely true that very few congressional Democrats actively supported it. But it's equally true that very few were willing to clearly and publicly oppose it. So what happened? There were lots of loud progressive activists yelling about defunding the police and they were met mostly by a yawning establishment silence. (Joe Biden was a prominent exception.) The public concluded, perfectly reasonably, that if (a) "defund the police" was a big thing on the left, and (b) Democrats weren't objecting to it, then (c) it must be something Democrats approved of.
There are dozens of examples of similar things. Open borders. Ultra touchiness. Overuse of calling people racist. Electric car mandates. Paper straws. Weird academic speaking styles. They/them. Word policing, which is hard on people who aren't super verbal and educated. Land acknowledgements.
And of course, in 2024, transgender edge cases. Like puberty blockers for 12-year-olds. Trans surgery for prisoners. Biological males competing in girls' sports. Kamala Harris didn't actively run on this stuff, but neither did she oppose it or disown her 2019 views. And it was probably a good thing, too. If she had, it would have generated enormous blowback and dominated the news for days or weeks. Look what happened to Harris in Michigan just for being squishily pro-Israel. Or to Seth Moulton for his girls' sports transgression—and that was after the election was over.
So lefty defenders miss the point when they say centrists control most of the Democratic Party. Of course they do. Nor is there anything centrists can do to stop hardcore lefties from saying whatever they want. But unless they want to be tarred with the lefty brush, they have to loudly and clearly oppose them—and that they're afraid to do. They're frozen in fear of taking massive flak from the righteous and their interest groupd. As long as that remains the case, the ultra-woke end up speaking for the party simply by filling a vacuum.
So is this why Democrats lost the election? I think it's part of the reason. But even though this is my view, the race was so close that I'm not willing to push it very hard. I don't see much concrete evidence that anything caused a huge turn away from Democrats, for the simple reason that there was no huge turn.
POSTSCRIPT: The same thing is true of Republicans, and as a result the Republican Party is generally tarred with the MAGA brush. The difference is that this doesn't hurt them much. That might be unfair, but it's reality.
Oh, Kevin.
Mainstream Democrats clearly repudiate and distance themselves from extreme "left" positions all the time. People like you harp all the time about how they need to do so, ignoring that they do, perpetuating the narrative that they aren't doing so either explicitly or by implication (which is where your posts fall).
It's just another example of how the bad faith of Republicans in general (you really CAN paint the entire party with the MAGA and before that its progenitor, the Tea Party, brush) has tainted the entire system.
Well, along with media's obsession with both-sides-ing absolutely fucking everything. Journalists and pundits seem to be constitutionally incapable of NOT both-sides-ing something. And so if Republicans really are their extremists, then Democrats must be, too.
Don't pay attention to your lying eyes or your lying ears when Democrats disavow radical positions and continually fly their centrist flag. Listen to the narrative! Everybody's radical, didn't you know that? Why can't they just work together and compromise? Don't believe Democrats when you hear them say they want to do just that, they don't want to, we promise! We're definitely not being intentionally obtuse or disingenuous in the slightest!
Come on, man. This is pretty obvious stuff.
+1
I agree wholeheartedly! The mainstream media does more than bothsides issues, they go out of their way to find the most extreme voices on the left, then cover them as if they are representative of the Democratic Party — or at least its elected representatives. I would bet most of those people are not even members of the Democratic Party but because the mainstream media is so wedded to the framing of Democrats as leftists it fits their preferred storyline to imply that they are Dems.
The media also uses leftist Ivy League students as representative of all students which provides ammunition for the right’s attack on universities as too woke.
In contrast for decades the media has buried stories about the extremism of powerful Republican leaders and financers, especially if their extremism is religious. For example the media has buried the fact that William Barr sits on the board of the far right Opus Dei Catholic cult’s influential Catholic Information Center in DC. They overlook the fact that others like Leonard Leo, Peter Theil and likely his puppet JD Vance who recently converted to far right Catholicism are connected to that group. The media has also not covered the prosecutions being brought against Opus Dei in Argentina and Peru for the trafficking of young, poor women to be their slave labor. This has all been documented in financial investigative reporter Gareth Gore’s new book “Opus” which has also been ignored by the media.
Although the media have obsessed over the sexual behavior of Pete Hegseth most mainstream journalists have chosen to ignore this shocking story which proves just how perverted and misogynistic the man is:
“ Pete Hegseth's mother begged him to "get some help" — he joined a misogynist church instead:
Fringe denomination's leader argues that men "dream of being rapists" because women aren't submissive enough”
Here is what Doug Wilson, the pastor of the church Hegseth chose to join preaches:
“ "Wilson holds the most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity," Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, told Salon. "Women are taught that submission to their husbands (and other male authorities) is submission to God. Independence of any kind is cast as sin."
In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women's fault for not being submissive enough. "[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party," he writes. "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to "dream of being rapists," deprived of the "erotic necessity" found in women's submission. Nancy Wilson, Doug Wilson's wife, backs this view, comparing a wife to a "garden" cultivated for the husband's pleasure: "But of course a husband is never trespassing in his own garden."
https://www.salon.com/2024/12/03/pete-hegseths-mother-begged-him-to-get-some-help---he-joined-a-misogynist-church-instead/
Of course Pastor Wilson says he doesn’t advocate marital rape but that is clearly because he doesn’t believe a man can rape his wife. After all it’s his “garden” he is “plowing”.
If the Hegseth appointment gets approved not serving in combat roles is not the only thing women in the military will need to worry about.
Jeez. That's worse than I thought. Thanks for the Gareth Gore “Opus” book reference. I will look for that.
+3
when i see the word "woke" in right wing media i assume it means the author is racist.
here, it has come to mean transphobia instead.
i don't see anyone using the word "woke" in its original positive sense as the past tense of wake with the implication of being already awake to the cis-white-heteronormative biases of society, just as i don't see anyone using the term "political correctness" in its original positive sense of courtesy.
the words have become a tell for those who want to pass off some racist or transphobic bloviating. its really kind of disgusting.
edited for spelling
I think Kevin is on to something. There are stupid ideas on the left, like "defund the police". But the majority of items on Kevin's "woke" list are reasonable: Leave medical decisions to doctors and their patients. Let medical researchers sort out the pros and cons of various gender dysphoria treatments, don't have the legislatures (of all people!) do it. Mandate electric cars (this one should absolutely be centrist in light of the climate crisis, in fact it would be universal in a rational world).
I think a big part of all of this is the stupid nomenclature that so many lefties spend too much time inventing: LBGTQ+ is a really stupid word and should never have been invented. Let's call them gender minorities or similar. The word "woke" is fine as a vernacular--maybe. But to use it to try and communicate with the polity at large will not make anybody any friends. It will instead deliver a soundbite to the opposition. "Woke" means common human decency if you look at the list of items that a woke person is supposed to care about. So why not call it common human decency and stop being creative and self indulgent?
Defunding the police is an excellent idea. Police are massively overfunded to the point that their budgets are crushing many cities and crowding out other needed spending, and we respond to far too many situations with "dispatch armed thugs, that'll make things better."
If you want to argue over the political popularity of the idea, fine. But "cops should be way more reasonably funded, and we should cut many things away from their responsibility and use that money to address those things instead" is a transparently great idea, as is simply point-blank spending less on cops.
I seem to recall that Defunders wanted some of the money spent on tanks to go instead to mental health professionals who would try to de-escalate police calls to mental health crises. There was quite a bit of support for that then, and probably there still is, but it does not seem to have happened.
That said, the "woke left" can be very annoying. They love breaking things. One example: what Kevin refers to as "land acknowledgements." If you're sorry someone stole the land you occupy from the Native Americans, then give it back. If you won't do that, then shut up.
One should note, however, that many tribes are becoming very wealthy from casinos. Our recently built local tribal casino on I-5 a few miles north of Vancouver, WA now generates enough cash to make large donations (recently about $700,000) to local charities.
The main problem is that to most people, including me, "defund" means "take away ALL the money". If an agency has been defunded it has a budget of zero. I know lots of defunders say "that's not what we mean at all", but while that may not be what the speaker means, that's what the words mean.
Curious what Gavin Newsome the governor would think of Gavin Newsome the mayor looking back 20 years ago.
I agree with the the jist of what KD wrote but if the situation was that simple it wouldn't be a problem. It's not just about "activists". There are plenty of leftists on city councils, in state legislatures, hell some were even elected local prosecutors, who were in policy-making positions which wound up as fodder for Fox News. One can ignore people occupying your office with a sit-in but attacking elected officials within one's own party simply leads to divisions that weaken the parties in the long run and make governing even more difficult than it already is. The bottom line the Dems are are a diverse political party, always have been, always will be. You have trans people not just protesting but actual law makers too. And while there are plenty of left non-major parties leftists could join to control they would not get elected as they are now in deep blue districts. Sorry, they're not going to act stupid for your benefit.
Having read a lot of stuff recently on the election and political scene, I've come to this conclusion: perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing the Dems lost, especially with Trump getting more votes so its legitimacy won't be questioned. Hopefully over the next four years a lot of this "woke" shit goes right back to the faculty lounges where it belongs, that sane people get elected to local office and such places become better run
And people need to experience the full force of a government run by radical right-wing reactionaries. That has happened before because previous Republican governments were tempered by non batshit insane or at least competent experienced in government. Even if Barry Goldwater had experienced a miracle and won in 1964 he would have had Nixon/Eisenhower types running stuff. He wasn't as crazy as some of the people supporting him. Given who Trump has nominated for his cabinet and given how they plan on running the country, there are no such people to pull the reigns back anymore. Complain about the Dems and how they do things all you wish but there's a big difference between bureaucracy and anarchy backed by tyranny. That's what the people voted for even if they don't think it will happen and that's what they will get. Sometimes you have to experience things to truly understand. The Democrats were in far worse shape in 2005 yet came roaring back a year later because events and Republican government in response to events wrecked. Why can't history repeat itself? And when it do you'll have the only means to unite the party and provide it a clear message, an unpopular Republican government. Sometimes, that's all it takes. And by that point, being "woke" won't matter jack shit.
Ah, yes. Another classic KDrum "what the Democratic Party really needs is to be more vicious and hostile to people with good ideas and who need their help the most. Also more racist. Also more transphobic."
Like, he lists "they/them" as an "extreme" idea that needs to be repudiated. Where I come from, "calling people as they wish to be called, within reason" is basic human decency. Saying "Democratic politicians need to stand up and say 'If you want to assign a gender to the nonbinary weirdo in your office and keep addressing them that way even when they ask you to stop, you should do that!'" is a gross thing to say.
He's increasingly a gross person.
If you see "woke" in a Kevin Drum headline, you can safely ignore it. Plus he seems to be edging a little bit every day towards the idiot's position on trans issues.
It's pretty disappointing that a guy who seems generally intelligent most of the time has been suckered so easily, but I guess it happens. Drastically reduces my interest in this blog for any other subject.
Kevin, puberty blockers for q2 year olds are for precocious puberty.
Why is this suddenly wrong for trans gender kids when it's okay for cis gender kids?
You're just repeating discredited and blatant lies.
Because something like 98% of gender dysphoric children who take puberty blockers move on to X-sex hormones, and that combination often leads to sterility? And that's isn't what happens when it is used to suppress precocious puberty.
In general, a treatment for one population with one problem doesn't automatically make it a good idea for a completely different population with a different problem.
Yeesh, you really are working hard to be outraged Crissa.
I care about beating the GOP into oblivion. This party and its media are poison.
Do the world a favor and identify with the Green Party, loudly and proudly. Jill Stein needs your vote!