I'm not sure how I've been a Daniel Oppenheimer reader this long without being aware of your Exit Right book, that sounds fascinating and is going right into my Amazon shopping cart. If I have one quibble with your most excellent piece, it's that I'm not sure how much "reflection and revision" are actually going on across the liberal establishment and to what extent the "awokening" is *OVER* rather than temporarily hibernating for a few years. It seems to me that the left establishment is in triage and circling the wagons, but still fundamentally from a sensibility of getting over this temporary trying time so they can get back to "normal," with "normal" still essentially consisting of overbearing managerialism enforcing "equity" across all conceivable demographic categories being the polite conventional wisdom. There's little evidence that the left coalition has truly been chastened or learned anything at all, as the ominous momentum behind Zohrab Mamdani's should-be-laughable candidacy demonstrates. The next Democratic president may talk like John Fetterman, but there's no reason to believe they won't govern exactly as Kamala Harris would have. It will take more than one term in the political wilderness for the Democratic Party to reconsider its kamikaze ways.
I guess we'll see. These are recurring tendencies on the left, so I don't think they ever go away entirely, but in the past they've certainly been exiled to the wilderness for a long time. The right has always accused the Democratic Party/liberal establishment of being a stalking horse for left wing subversion, and it mostly hasn't been true but is true once in a while. This time around just doesn't look that different to me, in terms of how the center left is responding. I think their awareness of the electoral cost of getting in bed with the left is intense.
I served on the executive board of my college Democrats chapter after Kerry's defeat in 2004, and there was an ecumenical all-hands-on-deck sense that we needed to build a very big tent and stop having so many litmus tests excluding gettable voters. There was some recognition that decent well-meaning people might disagree with the bulk of Democrats about immigration or abortion or gun control, and nonetheless be gettable with a kitchen table economic agenda that spoke to concretely improving ordinary people's lives. That openhearted and openminded spirit and a diverse array of candidates that could include people like Jim Webb is a big part of what led to the big Democratic victories in 2006 and contributed to Obama's victory in 2008.
The problem was that with Obama's reelection Democrats giddily assumed the "blue wall" would guarantee the presidency forevermore, and they didn't need to worry about maintaining a big tent (i.e. holding their nose to tolerate deplorables) anymore. It's hard for me to imagine a chapter of campus Democrats having anything like the productive attitude I saw 20 years ago, which was far from universal even then. The polarization of most political discourse into epistemically sealed echo chambers, not to mention the polarization that Trump drives, has made that sort of moving to the center far more difficult than it was in the former media environment. Turnout, especially in primaries, is driven by electrifying the base rather than making emotionally unsatisfying compromises to pick up swing voters in the general. If the Democratic Party writ large could tolerate any bit of deviation from culture war orthodoxies, wouldn't Kamala Harris have at least attempted a Sister Souljah moment or two?
As someone who works in a public library where "woke" DEI stuff is still very much part of the culture (I might even say they've doubled down on it since the election last year) and whose 14-YO nephew just stated that he is reading The Communist Manifesto because it's "required reading" and "necessary for life", I remain worried that the wackier and more dangerous side of the left will prevail over the more centrist liberal elements. But your piece was reassuring, and it's reinforced my mindset that, for now, I don't need to panic about the horrors of the current administration and its right-wing pushers OR what will happen if the fanatics on the other side supplant them in three years.
Let’s give Bernie some credit for being the one guy who’s always been centered in the heart of New Deal liberalism, even as he calls it Democratic Socialism. I’d love to see him move a little closer to embracing small business entrepreneurialism as a counterweight to our crushing corporate capitalism, instead of merely voicing pro-labor demands. And his weekly alphabet soup of reforms presented during his campaigns were tone deaf to the need of identifying with a very few clearly explicit themes. But all in all, Bernie is my guy, and even rural rednecks understand that he’s a genuine article, not in anybody’s pocket.
I used to believe that. For many years I admired Bernie Sanders for his career-long principled stand that the U.S. needed rigorous border security to protect the American labor pool, and then he abandoned that courageous stance in his 2016 campaign at the slightest pushback from Ezra Klein. I now see Bernie Sanders as perhaps the least honorable person in Washington, because in his heart of hearts he knows that he betrayed what he once stood for to grab for the brass ring of power. Perhaps he was once a genuine article, maybe, but now he's the furthest possible thing from that. Words can't capture the magnitude of my disappointment in the man.
I didn't leave the democratic party; it left me. Covid was the big red pill moment for me. I have no problem with some people being very worried about getting this new virus ( which leaked from a lab). But I had a huge problem with the mandates, and the ridiculous government over reach. Mediocre bureaucrats had the arrogance to pretend they were absolutely sure about all sorts of things- even though, the virus was admittedly, new and unknown. Then they refused to course correct.
Schools in my state were closed for TWO years. Toddlers were masked for 3 years in head start programs. Pregnant women, young people, were mandated to get a barely tested new vaccine which rapidly proved to NOT stop transmission or infection. Please, get the vaccine if you want it and think it will keep you safe. But for the love of God, don't force it on others in the name of keeping everyone safe, when we knew the vaccinated could still get covid and pass it on.
I could go on and on about the outrages. Remember double masking? Masking outdoors? BLM protests were A Okay but going to church - or to school wasn't . The worst was that democrats refused to examine what other countries or other states were doing and learn. Hey! Nordic countries only closed schools for like a month or two, they didnt mask kids, and guess what, everyone was ok! The burden of proof should have been on the maniacs who were turning civilization upside down.
I will read this article but it may be the end of a Persuasion subscription for me. Boo hoo- I know. It's getting harder and harder to follow the twisting paths of logic- everyone's logic. I have my own thinking to keep track of and that is hard enough. Are the writers, and commenters, here sure that what they are saying is adding to the wellbeing of the world? Helping people? Creating understanding?
Speaking as someone who's written for Persuasion in the past, my intention was very much to add to the wellbeing of the world, help people, and create understanding! I'd say they're making a good faith effort to bring together a motley assortment of largely but not exclusively center left voices to illuminate complex/nuanced topics and the ways in which reasonable people can honestly disagree. I'm an example of someone who disagrees with many an article in Persuasion, but I rarely feel that any of their contributors are insulting my intelligence, which is not true for many of Persuasion's peer publications in the center-left space. I would say keep your subscription but maybe only click when the headline grabs you!
Yes, and in a center right country with a two party system, which is the United States, the machinations and intrigues of the left and far left, however interesting they may be, are hardly relevant to who influences policy and wins elections.
Let's see, this is going to be perhaps simplistic, but I think your assessment/reporting is a bit simplistic, too. To a naive but long time observer it seems that right wing figures owe much to their predecessors--generations upon generations of them dating back to Babylon and Sumeria. Let's call them aristocrats, who have ever and always relied on serfs or slaves of some sort to maintain them atop glittering hills of excess, as well as admirable halls of intellectual effort and sometimes learning. This seems self interested in large part, but might also be a matter of temperament. But given this broad commonality, is it any wonder that they are so relatively homogenous in their views? The left is wrestling with alligators by contrast, trying mightily and failing often to lever the weight of history toward something new, different and more inclined toward equity and justice. It is maddeningly inclusive and diverse, making for a very fractious family trying to figure out just what to have for dinner. Is it any wonder, either, that they are always trying to hash out a reasonable compromise, and that a part of that effort generates feelings of self-righteousness. Even Bernie, who I have always admired, looks a bit holier than thou at times, although to his credit he walks the walk of his sturdy beliefs. The Right has no moral high ground to stand on OR aim for. Just more of the same old wine in new wineskins. One of these days, maybe in my lifetime, the process of evolution will make the two groups more cousinly, while preserving at least some useful polarity of opinion. I have to admit, as a matter of taste, for example, to wishing that we Dems had not glommed onto such a divisive issue as trans rights by embracing every aspect of the problem, from the medical to the sexual to the competitive without waiting for the research to provide more clarity around these issues. If it had been more of a side issue we might have won the last election, more's the pity.
I do not think the Right is homogeneous; I think you're more familiar with differences in the group you're nearer to. I could tell you 30 kinds of Midwesterners, but I couldn't name 2 languages spoken in India. This doesn't mean that India is homogeneous, just unfamiliar to me, and so I can't make as many distinctions between the people who live there.
Doubtless you are right about details and points of view within the whole, but find me a rock-ribbed Republican who does not revere monetary wealth over and above anything else save, perhaps Stoic ideals and the traditional family and I'll eat my own snark.
I'm not sure how I've been a Daniel Oppenheimer reader this long without being aware of your Exit Right book, that sounds fascinating and is going right into my Amazon shopping cart. If I have one quibble with your most excellent piece, it's that I'm not sure how much "reflection and revision" are actually going on across the liberal establishment and to what extent the "awokening" is *OVER* rather than temporarily hibernating for a few years. It seems to me that the left establishment is in triage and circling the wagons, but still fundamentally from a sensibility of getting over this temporary trying time so they can get back to "normal," with "normal" still essentially consisting of overbearing managerialism enforcing "equity" across all conceivable demographic categories being the polite conventional wisdom. There's little evidence that the left coalition has truly been chastened or learned anything at all, as the ominous momentum behind Zohrab Mamdani's should-be-laughable candidacy demonstrates. The next Democratic president may talk like John Fetterman, but there's no reason to believe they won't govern exactly as Kamala Harris would have. It will take more than one term in the political wilderness for the Democratic Party to reconsider its kamikaze ways.
Ha! Thanks for the purchase.
I guess we'll see. These are recurring tendencies on the left, so I don't think they ever go away entirely, but in the past they've certainly been exiled to the wilderness for a long time. The right has always accused the Democratic Party/liberal establishment of being a stalking horse for left wing subversion, and it mostly hasn't been true but is true once in a while. This time around just doesn't look that different to me, in terms of how the center left is responding. I think their awareness of the electoral cost of getting in bed with the left is intense.
I served on the executive board of my college Democrats chapter after Kerry's defeat in 2004, and there was an ecumenical all-hands-on-deck sense that we needed to build a very big tent and stop having so many litmus tests excluding gettable voters. There was some recognition that decent well-meaning people might disagree with the bulk of Democrats about immigration or abortion or gun control, and nonetheless be gettable with a kitchen table economic agenda that spoke to concretely improving ordinary people's lives. That openhearted and openminded spirit and a diverse array of candidates that could include people like Jim Webb is a big part of what led to the big Democratic victories in 2006 and contributed to Obama's victory in 2008.
The problem was that with Obama's reelection Democrats giddily assumed the "blue wall" would guarantee the presidency forevermore, and they didn't need to worry about maintaining a big tent (i.e. holding their nose to tolerate deplorables) anymore. It's hard for me to imagine a chapter of campus Democrats having anything like the productive attitude I saw 20 years ago, which was far from universal even then. The polarization of most political discourse into epistemically sealed echo chambers, not to mention the polarization that Trump drives, has made that sort of moving to the center far more difficult than it was in the former media environment. Turnout, especially in primaries, is driven by electrifying the base rather than making emotionally unsatisfying compromises to pick up swing voters in the general. If the Democratic Party writ large could tolerate any bit of deviation from culture war orthodoxies, wouldn't Kamala Harris have at least attempted a Sister Souljah moment or two?
As someone who works in a public library where "woke" DEI stuff is still very much part of the culture (I might even say they've doubled down on it since the election last year) and whose 14-YO nephew just stated that he is reading The Communist Manifesto because it's "required reading" and "necessary for life", I remain worried that the wackier and more dangerous side of the left will prevail over the more centrist liberal elements. But your piece was reassuring, and it's reinforced my mindset that, for now, I don't need to panic about the horrors of the current administration and its right-wing pushers OR what will happen if the fanatics on the other side supplant them in three years.
Let’s give Bernie some credit for being the one guy who’s always been centered in the heart of New Deal liberalism, even as he calls it Democratic Socialism. I’d love to see him move a little closer to embracing small business entrepreneurialism as a counterweight to our crushing corporate capitalism, instead of merely voicing pro-labor demands. And his weekly alphabet soup of reforms presented during his campaigns were tone deaf to the need of identifying with a very few clearly explicit themes. But all in all, Bernie is my guy, and even rural rednecks understand that he’s a genuine article, not in anybody’s pocket.
I used to believe that. For many years I admired Bernie Sanders for his career-long principled stand that the U.S. needed rigorous border security to protect the American labor pool, and then he abandoned that courageous stance in his 2016 campaign at the slightest pushback from Ezra Klein. I now see Bernie Sanders as perhaps the least honorable person in Washington, because in his heart of hearts he knows that he betrayed what he once stood for to grab for the brass ring of power. Perhaps he was once a genuine article, maybe, but now he's the furthest possible thing from that. Words can't capture the magnitude of my disappointment in the man.
I didn't leave the democratic party; it left me. Covid was the big red pill moment for me. I have no problem with some people being very worried about getting this new virus ( which leaked from a lab). But I had a huge problem with the mandates, and the ridiculous government over reach. Mediocre bureaucrats had the arrogance to pretend they were absolutely sure about all sorts of things- even though, the virus was admittedly, new and unknown. Then they refused to course correct.
Schools in my state were closed for TWO years. Toddlers were masked for 3 years in head start programs. Pregnant women, young people, were mandated to get a barely tested new vaccine which rapidly proved to NOT stop transmission or infection. Please, get the vaccine if you want it and think it will keep you safe. But for the love of God, don't force it on others in the name of keeping everyone safe, when we knew the vaccinated could still get covid and pass it on.
I could go on and on about the outrages. Remember double masking? Masking outdoors? BLM protests were A Okay but going to church - or to school wasn't . The worst was that democrats refused to examine what other countries or other states were doing and learn. Hey! Nordic countries only closed schools for like a month or two, they didnt mask kids, and guess what, everyone was ok! The burden of proof should have been on the maniacs who were turning civilization upside down.
Never again will I trust government.
I will read this article but it may be the end of a Persuasion subscription for me. Boo hoo- I know. It's getting harder and harder to follow the twisting paths of logic- everyone's logic. I have my own thinking to keep track of and that is hard enough. Are the writers, and commenters, here sure that what they are saying is adding to the wellbeing of the world? Helping people? Creating understanding?
Speaking as someone who's written for Persuasion in the past, my intention was very much to add to the wellbeing of the world, help people, and create understanding! I'd say they're making a good faith effort to bring together a motley assortment of largely but not exclusively center left voices to illuminate complex/nuanced topics and the ways in which reasonable people can honestly disagree. I'm an example of someone who disagrees with many an article in Persuasion, but I rarely feel that any of their contributors are insulting my intelligence, which is not true for many of Persuasion's peer publications in the center-left space. I would say keep your subscription but maybe only click when the headline grabs you!
Totally agree.
Yes, and in a center right country with a two party system, which is the United States, the machinations and intrigues of the left and far left, however interesting they may be, are hardly relevant to who influences policy and wins elections.
Let's see, this is going to be perhaps simplistic, but I think your assessment/reporting is a bit simplistic, too. To a naive but long time observer it seems that right wing figures owe much to their predecessors--generations upon generations of them dating back to Babylon and Sumeria. Let's call them aristocrats, who have ever and always relied on serfs or slaves of some sort to maintain them atop glittering hills of excess, as well as admirable halls of intellectual effort and sometimes learning. This seems self interested in large part, but might also be a matter of temperament. But given this broad commonality, is it any wonder that they are so relatively homogenous in their views? The left is wrestling with alligators by contrast, trying mightily and failing often to lever the weight of history toward something new, different and more inclined toward equity and justice. It is maddeningly inclusive and diverse, making for a very fractious family trying to figure out just what to have for dinner. Is it any wonder, either, that they are always trying to hash out a reasonable compromise, and that a part of that effort generates feelings of self-righteousness. Even Bernie, who I have always admired, looks a bit holier than thou at times, although to his credit he walks the walk of his sturdy beliefs. The Right has no moral high ground to stand on OR aim for. Just more of the same old wine in new wineskins. One of these days, maybe in my lifetime, the process of evolution will make the two groups more cousinly, while preserving at least some useful polarity of opinion. I have to admit, as a matter of taste, for example, to wishing that we Dems had not glommed onto such a divisive issue as trans rights by embracing every aspect of the problem, from the medical to the sexual to the competitive without waiting for the research to provide more clarity around these issues. If it had been more of a side issue we might have won the last election, more's the pity.
I do not think the Right is homogeneous; I think you're more familiar with differences in the group you're nearer to. I could tell you 30 kinds of Midwesterners, but I couldn't name 2 languages spoken in India. This doesn't mean that India is homogeneous, just unfamiliar to me, and so I can't make as many distinctions between the people who live there.
Doubtless you are right about details and points of view within the whole, but find me a rock-ribbed Republican who does not revere monetary wealth over and above anything else save, perhaps Stoic ideals and the traditional family and I'll eat my own snark.