I don’t think it cost anyone the election, no. The constant identity focus does make the Dems look out of touch, which did hurt them. Fatal blow? No. Helped set the stage? Yes.
If quality of life hadn't precipitously declined over the last four years, the election wouldn't have turned out like it did. Most people are generally apathetic on most social positions except the very young, who will either learn to grow out of it in time or grow up to be Twitter adults.
The Trump campaign spent an enormous amount of money running an ad about Harris' support for sex change operations for inmates in federal custody. I expect they had some foundation for doing that based on their internal polling.
I can't recall where, but I think there have been some post-election, swing-state specific focus groups--including one from a Democratic outfit--which found that the damn "they/them" ad that ran nonstop in swing states DID have a significant effect on pushing undecideds towards Trump. Which is why it's been so frustrating to see so many on the left try to brush off Freddie's topic with a version of "the election couldn't have been about identity politics, Kamala didn't run on being woke!" No, she didn't. REPUBLICANS ran on Kamala being woke, demonstrating the extent of the problem.
"the election couldn't have been about identity politics, Kamala didn't run on being woke!"
Once you've tarred yourself with a brush, it's not enough to stop talking about it and hope the tar just evaporates off of you. You need to do something to get it off.
See, I do think it was a factor in costing them the election by the deliberate attempt on “trying to campaign from the center”. No one was buying it. Was it THE issue, no! However, the milieu that created the zeitgeist influenced unfavorable policy based on this world view. When those policies were criticized it was met with identitarian condescension and scolding. It was a factor within a multifactorial framework of radioactive shit.
To be fair, if "woke".cost Harris a couple of percentage points in some swing states, the same goodthink MSM types presently gnashing their teeth and rending their garments would be gushing over Muh Hisorical Harris Presidency.
I don't think the Democrats got walloped solely because of identity politics, but the fact that they're not popular sure didn't help their cause.
There is a larger sense that the Democratic party has outsourced all of its decision making to the NGO/non-profit blob, which is absolutely not popular here. America does not strive to be Belgium.
This basically nailed the coffin shut on the extremely divisive era of the Barack Obama era of Democratic politics in America.
"You either want the unlikeable global plutocratic uniparty zero growth norm, or you're a bigot/Nazi" is, God willing, finally dead in the United States.
Maybe "woke" wasn't _the_ reason that the Democrats lost the election, but was it a reason? In the real world I think that all interesting phenomenon are multivariate. The economy mattered, immigration mattered, but so did the cultural clash between classes. In that sense woke is significant not only because its actual precepts look crazy to outsiders but also because it's a signifier of class and the gulf between the so-called elites and the wider population is a major driver of political polarization.
Not sure I'm right about this, but I took Freddie to be drawing a distinction between a core set of *political aims* that fall under "identity politics", and a censorious, condescending *mode of engagement* associated with identity politics. The point (if I'm not misreading) is that Democrats didn't lose because of widespread antipathy to those aims – since most people were focused much more on *other* issues (inflation, immigration). At the same time, anger and frustration at this mode of engagement was much more costly. (Corrections welcome!)
It has been pointed out on numerous occasions that the vast majority of Americans believe that the correct approach to race is "Judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin".
In other words, a color blind approach. That is definitely not what the woke crowd is advocating for, which are different societal standards for different identity groups. That view is simply incompatible with what most people believe.
So the concrete values of the woke are anathema to the bulk of voters. What about the argument that the real culprits behinds the Democrats' loss were the economy and illegal immigration? There's any number of polls that put cultural issues at #3 at the top of voters' concerns. I would also point out that you could make an argument that it didn't rank higher because the economy and illegal immigration were absolutely enormous issues this cycle.
It's hard to believe that popular opinions can triumph over unpopular ones, right?
Well, no, unless you're a die hard left winger who puts ideology over real politics, which is the real reason the Democrats got creamed. They let global billionaires advocate for shit that isn't even actually that popular in Europe become the norm in America, and lo and behold, Americans didn't like it.
I remember reading an academic paper recently that asked progressives to estimate how popular their positions were with the general public. They were awful, consistently overshooting actual poll results by double digits and turning losing positions into winners.
I can't help but wonder if it's because of the infamous "bubble". Everyone they know agrees with them so that must mean it's popular with everyone, right?
As a non-faculty person (i.e. staffer) who works at a state university, the "bubble" is definitely a thing. Who knows to what degree, but it's apparent enough to me that I'm often tempted to stop whatever meeting we're in, stand up, and calmly tell everyone they need to realize that this academic bubble we all work in (and somewhat live in) is not the real world.
Something tells me it would fall on deaf ears though.
While I agree with all of what you say here, one thing I keep coming back to is the following: Why is it that for "the left" the question of message discipline and accountability are supposed to matter, while the same isn't true for "the right?"
Conservatives never have to answer for the excesses of other people in their coalition - even outright white nationalists. They never suffer the political price if their followers are mean on social media. They never have to worry about message discipline at all.
Ultimately, I think the Trump era has shown that the biggest political liability is shame. If you act like there's nothing to feel guilty about, apolitical people won't be cued in. But if your side is being attacked due to issue ___, and you behave in such a way to imply they might really have a point, then to an observer outside the movement, it sure looks like you're the ones at fault.
Why? Because a month ago the American voting public looked at both sides and decided that the extremists on the right were less obnoxious, or that they were being blown entirely out of proportion by a media that was clearly biased.
In other words, the Republicans won. I would guess that if they don't change course the Democrats are going to lose again and again and again. It is incumbent on losers to examine their failed strategies in a manner that simply does not apply to winners.
My read of it more is that the Republicans ran an "undisciplined" campaign in ways that worked. Trump literally was campaigning on different messages, with different things, depending upon whether he was talking to the conservative base or going on a center-right podcast. Given swing voters aren't people who follow news closely, this was enough to swing the crucial 2% or so he needed.
But ultimately, I think the Democrats have more of a governance problem than a messaging one. If you run on the campaign of "vote for us for good government" you have to be perceived as being good at governing. The turnout drop in major Dem-controlled cities (along with a smaller swing to Trump) kind of proves they failed at that.
It's not a question of "either-or" though, it can be "all of the above". For example, Trump's "Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you" ad is widely viewed as one of his most effective by political observers.
Or take a look at illegal immigration where normie fury about crimes like the murder of Jocelyn Nungaray is also mixed up in a sense that leftists deliberately instituted a policy of open borders for reasons of political ideology.
After every loss, the Democrats want to tell themselves, "Well, actually, the voters prefer us, we just failed to tell them that."
It's self-indulgent and should be viewed with skepticism.
All that said, it was amazing that Biden never did an ad bragging that the US was pumping more oil than ever. The BIF somehow got seen as a political fumble because of the optics around appeasing the radicals, when in any normal world it would be a big policy win. Lots of environmentalists think Biden never did anything to help green energy when the IRA was packed full of boosts for it. Biden burnt a lot of political capital to get inroads with unions but you'd never know it. After decades of dumb industrial policy from both parties, the CHIPS Act was finally a decent thing that was accomplishing its stated task. This all got boiled into ads saying "the economy is doing well" which only convinced people who could already write the paragraph I just did.
Yeah. While I'd still argue Biden was probably the best president on domestic policy of my lifetime, he was F-tier when it came to actually engaging in any messaging based upon those accomplishments.
I mean, he admitted himself he was stupid to not put his name on stimulus checks!
Biden had a set of priorities that differed significantly from what the median voter considered important. It was his failure on those issues (the economy and immigration) that helped set the stage for his collapse.
Maybe he did a good job at getting infrastructure bills passed, but that seems kind of worthless given what voters were actually worried about.
Biden's actions on immigration were politically disastrous, full stop.
On the economy though? We had the most solid post-pandemic jobs recovery, and while inflation spiked, it peaked at lower levels than some of our peer countries. The bottom 80% of the income spectrum also had real wage growth over the past four years.
Look, I understand that voters - especially swing voters - aren't going to look at hypotheticals here, or other countries. But a second concurrent Trump term would have looked fairly similar. Maybe inflation is about 2% lower overall, and job growth is a bit weaker. But anyone would have been facing down a malaise among swing voters in 2024, since governing parties lost share in every election on earth this year.
It's so hard to be good at all the things; in my life, I've seen a lot of the gulf between "spending your time actually solving problems" and "spending your time spoon-feeding narratives to the people whose problems you're solving to endlessly remind/keep in front them of what you did." That's outside of politics - I know politics is about both, which is very hard and why you have to have brilliant messaging people around you.
When the response after losing an election is that "AcKsHUaLLy, the voters just don't know how awesome we really are", you know the actual politics involved are a pile of dogshit.
Big reason 'academics' and by extension the uni 'educated', are staunchly left wing in theory only, but staunchly capitalist and and pro-establishnent in practice.
Ultimately, Trump is not beholden to his base. He just isn't. He does whatever he likes at any given moment and Fox News, the Republican Party and everyone else follows in his wake. Whereas the sense was that the Democrats were still following rules set from 2016 onwards even if they said they weren't.
What about outright white nationalists in the Democrat Party? James Carville for one. I can't post it here, but I have the image of Hillary Clinton kissing Congressional Klansman Robert Byrd, who never got the N-word out of his mouth.
IMHO, the white nationalists aren't running the show in conservative circles. Immigration reform turned out to be popular with the working class of all nationalities, but you don't see any support for banning cross racial marriages or creating a white homeland or whatever it is that white nationalists want.
"Why is it that for "the left" the question of message discipline and accountability are supposed to matter, while the same isn't true for "the right?""
The two parties, and the ideas of them within culture at large, are different. The left, for lack of a better term, runs toward progress, while the right is reactionary. And when looked at like from this perspective, that one party is the Ought party, while the other is the IS, it looks a little different. If you are presenting the future then to get people to buy into that vision, you need to be sparkly clean, appealing from most every angle. But if you are running on the present, you only have to show that you are capable, and that you work.
"Conservatives never have to answer for the excesses of other people in their coalition - even outright white nationalists. They never suffer the political price if their followers are mean on social media. They never have to worry about message discipline at all."
It only appears this way too you (and anyone else of the left) because the opposite is what the right sees.
And as far as shame goes, this only works if people agree to the shame and the reasons behind it. And the sense of a shared social fabric falls apart really quickly when the person trying to make others seem shameful when they act in a shameful way to the people they are attempting to appeal to.
"Why is it that for "the left" the question of message discipline and accountability are supposed to matter, while the same isn't true for "the right?"
The left is not always held accountable, however, and the right is in fact held accountable by the left or we wouldn't even be talking about this.
What does it look like when someone is held accountable?
Is shame what runs that show? Shame is only a partially useful emotion. It invades your conscious mind, often only resulting in a desire to push the shame onto someone else. It becomes a zero sum game. Shame only tells you that you are being judged, not that you are right or wrong.
I have no data for this, but my hypothesis is that when normie republicans hear about the Proud Boys, etc., they think "Republicans aren't like that, I'm a *real* republican." The republicans they know will confirm this if asked.
Whereas when I, a dem, hear woke stuff, I think "I'm not like that, am I even a democrat any more?" -- and the democrats around me will either confirm that the woke stuff is required, or that they also are wondering whether there is any place for them in the party.
"if someone had said exactly what Butler says here, on Twitter in 2018, they would have been ripped to shreds"
If woke has peaked and is now in retreat I think the best comparison would be what happened to the PC movement of the 1990's. Social movements like political correctness and wokeness are inherently political. That's their Achilles heel--when they become so unpopular that they start costing the Democrats votes the moderates in that party will seize the reins back and banish their rivals back to the fringes of society; by which I mean college campuses.
In 1992 Bill Clinton demonstrated his moderate bona fides by overseeing the execution of Ricky Ray Rector and trashing Sister Soulja as a reverse racist. I expect that if the Democrats lose a few more elections that eventually they will grow tired of losing and a new moderate candidate will need to find a scapegoat that can be used to disavow the extreme left.
I am pretty sure that climate change has hit a wall in terms of its influence/acceptance. At this point there is some segment of the population that views it as an important issue and a much larger majority that doesn't.
"The larger majority" doesn't care about most of the things issue-oriented people care about. So?
The climate change denial 'segment' has been stupidly influential and will certainly be so in the new administration, and it has mostly moved from #1 to #2.
And of course, it's not like climate change is going to 'get better' or 'not get worse' through inattention, which is to say, atmospheric physics gives sweet F.A. what 'the larger majority' cares about...or what the denialist segment believes.
I don't think acceptance of climate change has ever been at a higher level, and certainly constitutes a majority. But acceptance (as opposed to denial) seems to make little difference in willingness to take personal action or support mitigation policies. For that there has only ever been minority support.
People don't mind the idea of lots of other people having to make changes, but seldom themselves. To take climate change seriously, one has to recognize that some of the the ever-growing number of modcons may have to be trimmed. At a very low threshold of inconvenience, that prospect is a big turn-off, and the rationalizing kicks in strongly, whether it be techno-saviourism, blaming others, or numerous other dodges.
So majority support seems unlikely. With our trend of becoming a more indoor species each year, I suspect that majority support only becomes less plausible over time.
I wonder about comparisons to the 1960s, which was the last period when the youth of a country was entirely gripped by a philosophy they didn't actually believe in: distributing Mao's Little Red Book, advocating revolution, etc. But that seemed attributable to the Baby Boom, and so many coming of age in such huge numbers, and the Vietnam draft. What was this attributable to apart from social media? Is that not the root cause of it all, that the academic and media class seized on a new technology, gained huge cultural power because of it all, then used it to create a new world of censorship, terror and control?
Musa al-Gharbi’s recent book We Have Never Been Woke is a pretty good analysis of this. His thesis is that it’s primarily economic anxiety driving it—all the fancy jobs promised to privileged kids (media pundit, college professor, etc.) just don’t exist anymore (or at least exist in much smaller numbers), leading to a general sense of injustice that’s screaming for an outlet.
" the youth of a country was entirely gripped by a philosophy they didn't actually believe in:"
The last part of that quote is correct, but the first is not. In the 1960s, the opinion explicitly expressed in the Beatles' song "Revolution" was leagues more popular than Mao's Red Book.
Presently, the two factions most determined to cast the 1960s as dominated by Far Left Politics are the Bill Ayers/Weatherman fringe, who were there, and find that a useful turf claim; and elements of the modern day American Right Wing, who were not. The 1960s had a lot of Youth Politics to it, but William O'Neill's 1971 book Coming Apart--a much more tempered assessment than the conclusions of either the partisan Left or the partisan Right--provides an account that has the ring of truth, to me; the movement of the day was much more inchoate and ad hoc, and largely united by opposition to the Vietnam War. Both Todd Gitlin (The Sixties) and Robin Morgan (The Demon Lover) offer cogent criticisms of the Far Left fringe of their era, despite both of them being located pretty far to the Left in their politics. It's my impression that the rank and file of Woke Youth have not distinguished themselves in their historical erudition--particularly when it comes to reading outside of their intellectual silos--so I seriously doubt that they've read any of the books I've cited.
Politics is creating alliances even amidst differences. Contempt for others with differing opinions is an evolutionary kill switch in both directions. It is not merely corrosive, but poisonous and fatal to the alliance process.
“Sad fact: social justice progressives think that if you disagree with them on any one thing, you’re their enemy, while new right types think that if you agree with them on any one thing, you’re their friend.”
Parties used to be much more diverse. If Congress was writing a law about guns or abortion or regulations or spending, they would get more support from one party or the other, but each party had sizable minorities and it reminded people every day that you have to build coalitions on one issue with those who differ with you on other issues.
"Politics is creating alliances even amidst differences."
Successful politics in democratic republics is about those coalitions. Ideally.
Ironically, the two-party power hegemony sustained by the inability to rank choices at the ballot box (only two ranks, that's all I ask!) has permitted both the Democratic and Republican parties to demonize the opposing side in a zero sum game, as if the goal is Final Victory by annihilating any trace of opposition.
The insincerity of that hyperbole is a pretty pathetic excuse for a saving grace. It's given a great many rank and file loyalists in both parties the wrong impression--they actually take the goal of total annihilation of the partisan opponents in the Duopoly as their guiding mission.
> but Gallup put out a pretty large poll asking people who had voted to rank the issues that influenced their vote, and those issues associated with identity politics were consistently ranked quite low.
Blueprint2024 has a list about 20 reasons, and they would give respondents 2 randoms ones, ask which was more important, which was a way of finding out which issues mattered compared to the average, minimizing problems with overlapping issues.
Inflation and immigration are the top 2, with cultural issues the 3rd. But cultural issues were most important for swing voters. (But not very important with Hispanic voters, which is not at all what I would have guessed.)
It's interesting to look at all the items in red. No one cares about lockdowns any more, people don't care either way about the middle east. They weren't even terribly worried about Democrats raising taxes or being soft on crime, things the Democrats often worry about.
One, I think there's good polling that indicates that cultural issues were important. Maybe the economy and illegal immigration were ranked higher, but given the state of the economy and the border that's not really surprising.
Two, I think there's a growing cultural gap between the PMC and everyone else. The two groups watch different shows, read different books, listen to different music. And one is far more likely to get married than the other. In that sense the cultural conflict is inextricably tangled up with a class conflict. I don't think I'm the only one that believes that "woke" politics are overwhelmingly associated with the college educated while it's far less prevalent among the working class.
The sub-10% answers are all tiny things you have to be unusual to rank as the #1 most important. ("Lack of respect for each other" at 2%. I love you whoever you are but you're weird.) Even the way Gallup categorizes it, economic issues were only the #1 issue to about 1/3 of the country.
Only 2% of people listed abortion. That suggests the country doesn't care about it. But everyone knows it does matter a lot to a lot of people. It's just not #1, even in the first post-Dobbs Presidential election.
This is a good point. Freddie’s wish is great, but the window is fast closing. If anyone was going to write this article they’d need to do it now, right now. If they wait until all the cool kids are already on board it (1) wouldn’t mean much and (2) will just regurgitate whatever the zeitgeist of the moment is.
He was also cancelled by the right for being Muslim and saying things that were not sufficiently America-loving when he was a young non-tenured academic. That said Freddie's right about him not being an insider. He's involved in the Heterodox Academy community, which is the heretical wing of the academic world these days.
I've read his book and have been following him for a bit now. He's got a good perspective.
I don't think anyone's ever going to produce that piece, for the same reason there's never a memo from corporate HQ explaining why all the DEI stuff that was so important 4 years ago has suddenly disappeared. It would require too many people to admit to great personal failing, that they have no principles, got Twitter brained or otherwise just followed what they assumed was the zeitgeist until the music stopped. It's like asking for people to explain why they wore some piece of fashion a decade or two ago that now everyone agrees is ridiculous.
"...how [did] the default person in media...from being, in 2012, a vaguely apolitical center-left liberal Democrat to, by 2016, a relentlessly hectoring social justice advocate?"
...if I remember correctly, Scott Alexander (over at ACX) made a prediction right after Trump's election victory in 2016 that it would drive parts of the US left mad the following years. And woke-style leftism was arguably turned up a notch during Trump's first persidency. That's 2016-2020 rather than 2012 to 2016, but still.
I think a lot of people (myself included) felt like they needed "to do something" following the shock of Trump's victory in 2016. That feeling manifested itself in a lot of different ways, especially the media going crazy with "moral clarity" and visions of being the next Woodward and Bernstein and toppling a president.
It's weird that people now are saying 2019 was the height of wokeness, because in 2019 people were saying wokeness was a 2014-2016 thing and it was already over. We are now on like the 3rd or 4th cycle of "wokeness is finally dead". I think the clear starting point has to be the nerd civil war (the group of events around 2010-2015 like Atheism+, Gamergate, Sad Puppies, etc.), and the collapse of Occupy. If this is really end then the end date is surely October 7, 2023.
“Well no one was actually hurt by these cancellations,”
Sure, by that logic, no one was actually hurt by the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan ... lots of people were hurt, Dr. Judith Butler to start with, Drs Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying were almost killed by the mob, the same mobs did $2B worth of damage, set fires, murdered 28 people ... no one was actually hurt—MY ASS.
I agree. For example, the author argues that Al Franken wasn't hurt. Sure, he's not a Senator any more, but he's been allegedly invited to speak at "Politicon," which the author claims is "a major political convention." Woo!
Weinstein and Heying were not "almost killed", and the Evergreen mob was the "same mob" that murdered people. It was a truly goofy mob and I don't doubt that the two professors were scared, but come on now.
I think there's often a split between a concept at the academic/theoretical level and on the ground.
For example, intersectionality sounded reasonable to me in theory - we'd expand identity to recognize that a white male who was raised in the foster care system is different than a generic white guy, and might even face greater obstacles than a black female whose parents stayed married, have professional degrees, and who have a vast professional network, in part due to her father being President of the United States.
But in practice, it just became a stacking exercise. Black is more oppressed than white, black female is more oppressed than black, black disabled transwoman lesbian sex worker trumps all of them, etc.
Similarly, Butler is right that identitarianism isn't a great way to garner support for a revolution, but I'm skeptical that much change will occur at the ground level or on BlueSky.
Good post! But doesn't it seem like John McWhorter's writing in the Times, and with his books, is a decent example of what you are calling for? I think you are spot on that no one wants to take the L, even when someone as measured and calm and sane as he is is trying to tell them something. Edsall's piece in the Times today is about boys falling behind in school and why it is happening, backed with all this MIT research, and the "reader's picks" comments are topped by people screaming that men deserve zero sympathy. It's ongoing.
I haven't read that article but it's so sad (your statement about the comments). And anecdotally, I know lifelong democrats whose sons have just had it — they don't feel like they belong in this group at all. I mean, these are late teens—yes, of privilege—but who wants to feel like they suck all the time, when you're still forming your sense of self?
But John McWhorter has always been 'suspect' with the identitarian left; he is closely aligned with Thomas Chatterton Williams, and that group. You need someone from the inside.
It's funny, I have the opposite reaction. John McWhorter is an incredibly interesting writer and thinker, but he got infected by the "anti-woke mind virus" and has wasted time writing tedious stuff about "wokeness," including recently an entire tedious book. There's an opportunity cost, of course--we lost what surely would have been an interesting book by McWhorter on an interesting topic, instead of disposable grist for the culture war mill. Sad, to me.
I don’t think it cost anyone the election, no. The constant identity focus does make the Dems look out of touch, which did hurt them. Fatal blow? No. Helped set the stage? Yes.
The cherry on a sundae of shit flavored ice cream.
If quality of life hadn't precipitously declined over the last four years, the election wouldn't have turned out like it did. Most people are generally apathetic on most social positions except the very young, who will either learn to grow out of it in time or grow up to be Twitter adults.
The Trump campaign spent an enormous amount of money running an ad about Harris' support for sex change operations for inmates in federal custody. I expect they had some foundation for doing that based on their internal polling.
I can't recall where, but I think there have been some post-election, swing-state specific focus groups--including one from a Democratic outfit--which found that the damn "they/them" ad that ran nonstop in swing states DID have a significant effect on pushing undecideds towards Trump. Which is why it's been so frustrating to see so many on the left try to brush off Freddie's topic with a version of "the election couldn't have been about identity politics, Kamala didn't run on being woke!" No, she didn't. REPUBLICANS ran on Kamala being woke, demonstrating the extent of the problem.
"the election couldn't have been about identity politics, Kamala didn't run on being woke!"
Once you've tarred yourself with a brush, it's not enough to stop talking about it and hope the tar just evaporates off of you. You need to do something to get it off.
See, I do think it was a factor in costing them the election by the deliberate attempt on “trying to campaign from the center”. No one was buying it. Was it THE issue, no! However, the milieu that created the zeitgeist influenced unfavorable policy based on this world view. When those policies were criticized it was met with identitarian condescension and scolding. It was a factor within a multifactorial framework of radioactive shit.
To be fair, if "woke".cost Harris a couple of percentage points in some swing states, the same goodthink MSM types presently gnashing their teeth and rending their garments would be gushing over Muh Hisorical Harris Presidency.
I don't think the Democrats got walloped solely because of identity politics, but the fact that they're not popular sure didn't help their cause.
There is a larger sense that the Democratic party has outsourced all of its decision making to the NGO/non-profit blob, which is absolutely not popular here. America does not strive to be Belgium.
This basically nailed the coffin shut on the extremely divisive era of the Barack Obama era of Democratic politics in America.
"You either want the unlikeable global plutocratic uniparty zero growth norm, or you're a bigot/Nazi" is, God willing, finally dead in the United States.
Maybe "woke" wasn't _the_ reason that the Democrats lost the election, but was it a reason? In the real world I think that all interesting phenomenon are multivariate. The economy mattered, immigration mattered, but so did the cultural clash between classes. In that sense woke is significant not only because its actual precepts look crazy to outsiders but also because it's a signifier of class and the gulf between the so-called elites and the wider population is a major driver of political polarization.
Not sure I'm right about this, but I took Freddie to be drawing a distinction between a core set of *political aims* that fall under "identity politics", and a censorious, condescending *mode of engagement* associated with identity politics. The point (if I'm not misreading) is that Democrats didn't lose because of widespread antipathy to those aims – since most people were focused much more on *other* issues (inflation, immigration). At the same time, anger and frustration at this mode of engagement was much more costly. (Corrections welcome!)
It has been pointed out on numerous occasions that the vast majority of Americans believe that the correct approach to race is "Judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin".
In other words, a color blind approach. That is definitely not what the woke crowd is advocating for, which are different societal standards for different identity groups. That view is simply incompatible with what most people believe.
So the concrete values of the woke are anathema to the bulk of voters. What about the argument that the real culprits behinds the Democrats' loss were the economy and illegal immigration? There's any number of polls that put cultural issues at #3 at the top of voters' concerns. I would also point out that you could make an argument that it didn't rank higher because the economy and illegal immigration were absolutely enormous issues this cycle.
It's hard to believe that popular opinions can triumph over unpopular ones, right?
Well, no, unless you're a die hard left winger who puts ideology over real politics, which is the real reason the Democrats got creamed. They let global billionaires advocate for shit that isn't even actually that popular in Europe become the norm in America, and lo and behold, Americans didn't like it.
What were the odds?
I remember reading an academic paper recently that asked progressives to estimate how popular their positions were with the general public. They were awful, consistently overshooting actual poll results by double digits and turning losing positions into winners.
I can't help but wonder if it's because of the infamous "bubble". Everyone they know agrees with them so that must mean it's popular with everyone, right?
As a non-faculty person (i.e. staffer) who works at a state university, the "bubble" is definitely a thing. Who knows to what degree, but it's apparent enough to me that I'm often tempted to stop whatever meeting we're in, stand up, and calmly tell everyone they need to realize that this academic bubble we all work in (and somewhat live in) is not the real world.
Something tells me it would fall on deaf ears though.
If Idpol doesn't give its practitioners the opportunity to demonstrate their moral superiority, then what is the point?
While I agree with all of what you say here, one thing I keep coming back to is the following: Why is it that for "the left" the question of message discipline and accountability are supposed to matter, while the same isn't true for "the right?"
Conservatives never have to answer for the excesses of other people in their coalition - even outright white nationalists. They never suffer the political price if their followers are mean on social media. They never have to worry about message discipline at all.
Ultimately, I think the Trump era has shown that the biggest political liability is shame. If you act like there's nothing to feel guilty about, apolitical people won't be cued in. But if your side is being attacked due to issue ___, and you behave in such a way to imply they might really have a point, then to an observer outside the movement, it sure looks like you're the ones at fault.
Why? Because a month ago the American voting public looked at both sides and decided that the extremists on the right were less obnoxious, or that they were being blown entirely out of proportion by a media that was clearly biased.
In other words, the Republicans won. I would guess that if they don't change course the Democrats are going to lose again and again and again. It is incumbent on losers to examine their failed strategies in a manner that simply does not apply to winners.
My read of it more is that the Republicans ran an "undisciplined" campaign in ways that worked. Trump literally was campaigning on different messages, with different things, depending upon whether he was talking to the conservative base or going on a center-right podcast. Given swing voters aren't people who follow news closely, this was enough to swing the crucial 2% or so he needed.
But ultimately, I think the Democrats have more of a governance problem than a messaging one. If you run on the campaign of "vote for us for good government" you have to be perceived as being good at governing. The turnout drop in major Dem-controlled cities (along with a smaller swing to Trump) kind of proves they failed at that.
It's not a question of "either-or" though, it can be "all of the above". For example, Trump's "Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you" ad is widely viewed as one of his most effective by political observers.
Or take a look at illegal immigration where normie fury about crimes like the murder of Jocelyn Nungaray is also mixed up in a sense that leftists deliberately instituted a policy of open borders for reasons of political ideology.
After every loss, the Democrats want to tell themselves, "Well, actually, the voters prefer us, we just failed to tell them that."
It's self-indulgent and should be viewed with skepticism.
All that said, it was amazing that Biden never did an ad bragging that the US was pumping more oil than ever. The BIF somehow got seen as a political fumble because of the optics around appeasing the radicals, when in any normal world it would be a big policy win. Lots of environmentalists think Biden never did anything to help green energy when the IRA was packed full of boosts for it. Biden burnt a lot of political capital to get inroads with unions but you'd never know it. After decades of dumb industrial policy from both parties, the CHIPS Act was finally a decent thing that was accomplishing its stated task. This all got boiled into ads saying "the economy is doing well" which only convinced people who could already write the paragraph I just did.
Plus he had very publicly killed Keystone as a PR thing. It would have been mixed messaging at best if he had boasted about oil and gas production.
Yeah. While I'd still argue Biden was probably the best president on domestic policy of my lifetime, he was F-tier when it came to actually engaging in any messaging based upon those accomplishments.
I mean, he admitted himself he was stupid to not put his name on stimulus checks!
Biden had a set of priorities that differed significantly from what the median voter considered important. It was his failure on those issues (the economy and immigration) that helped set the stage for his collapse.
Maybe he did a good job at getting infrastructure bills passed, but that seems kind of worthless given what voters were actually worried about.
Biden's actions on immigration were politically disastrous, full stop.
On the economy though? We had the most solid post-pandemic jobs recovery, and while inflation spiked, it peaked at lower levels than some of our peer countries. The bottom 80% of the income spectrum also had real wage growth over the past four years.
Look, I understand that voters - especially swing voters - aren't going to look at hypotheticals here, or other countries. But a second concurrent Trump term would have looked fairly similar. Maybe inflation is about 2% lower overall, and job growth is a bit weaker. But anyone would have been facing down a malaise among swing voters in 2024, since governing parties lost share in every election on earth this year.
It's so hard to be good at all the things; in my life, I've seen a lot of the gulf between "spending your time actually solving problems" and "spending your time spoon-feeding narratives to the people whose problems you're solving to endlessly remind/keep in front them of what you did." That's outside of politics - I know politics is about both, which is very hard and why you have to have brilliant messaging people around you.
"Biden was probably the best president on domestic policy of my lifetime,...
How old are you, 4?
When the response after losing an election is that "AcKsHUaLLy, the voters just don't know how awesome we really are", you know the actual politics involved are a pile of dogshit.
"After every loss, the Democrats want to tell themselves, "Well, actually, the voters prefer us, we just failed to tell them that.""
That or "the voters are stupid and unable to perceive our obvious superiority!"
Big reason 'academics' and by extension the uni 'educated', are staunchly left wing in theory only, but staunchly capitalist and and pro-establishnent in practice.
I would say that the overeducated think that "come the revolution, I'm going to get the whip hand at last, instead of that dumb meathead Teke."
Ultimately, Trump is not beholden to his base. He just isn't. He does whatever he likes at any given moment and Fox News, the Republican Party and everyone else follows in his wake. Whereas the sense was that the Democrats were still following rules set from 2016 onwards even if they said they weren't.
What about outright white nationalists in the Democrat Party? James Carville for one. I can't post it here, but I have the image of Hillary Clinton kissing Congressional Klansman Robert Byrd, who never got the N-word out of his mouth.
Neither side has a monopoly on virtue.
James Carville a white nationalist?
IMHO, the white nationalists aren't running the show in conservative circles. Immigration reform turned out to be popular with the working class of all nationalities, but you don't see any support for banning cross racial marriages or creating a white homeland or whatever it is that white nationalists want.
"Why is it that for "the left" the question of message discipline and accountability are supposed to matter, while the same isn't true for "the right?""
The two parties, and the ideas of them within culture at large, are different. The left, for lack of a better term, runs toward progress, while the right is reactionary. And when looked at like from this perspective, that one party is the Ought party, while the other is the IS, it looks a little different. If you are presenting the future then to get people to buy into that vision, you need to be sparkly clean, appealing from most every angle. But if you are running on the present, you only have to show that you are capable, and that you work.
"Conservatives never have to answer for the excesses of other people in their coalition - even outright white nationalists. They never suffer the political price if their followers are mean on social media. They never have to worry about message discipline at all."
It only appears this way too you (and anyone else of the left) because the opposite is what the right sees.
And as far as shame goes, this only works if people agree to the shame and the reasons behind it. And the sense of a shared social fabric falls apart really quickly when the person trying to make others seem shameful when they act in a shameful way to the people they are attempting to appeal to.
"Why is it that for "the left" the question of message discipline and accountability are supposed to matter, while the same isn't true for "the right?"
The left is not always held accountable, however, and the right is in fact held accountable by the left or we wouldn't even be talking about this.
What does it look like when someone is held accountable?
When someone is held accountable, they apologize, walk back, disavow, etc. They concede space in the realm of public debate.
Is shame what runs that show? Shame is only a partially useful emotion. It invades your conscious mind, often only resulting in a desire to push the shame onto someone else. It becomes a zero sum game. Shame only tells you that you are being judged, not that you are right or wrong.
If you fall short of your own standards/expectations then shouldn't you be ashamed?
No, you should change. At the very least, learn to understand why.
But shame is the evolutionary mechanism that motivates that change.
What if they don't agree with what they are supposedly being held accountable for?
This falls squarely in the same realm as shame, which, in order to shame someone, they both need to feel shame, and others need to find them shameful.
I have no data for this, but my hypothesis is that when normie republicans hear about the Proud Boys, etc., they think "Republicans aren't like that, I'm a *real* republican." The republicans they know will confirm this if asked.
Whereas when I, a dem, hear woke stuff, I think "I'm not like that, am I even a democrat any more?" -- and the democrats around me will either confirm that the woke stuff is required, or that they also are wondering whether there is any place for them in the party.
"if someone had said exactly what Butler says here, on Twitter in 2018, they would have been ripped to shreds"
If woke has peaked and is now in retreat I think the best comparison would be what happened to the PC movement of the 1990's. Social movements like political correctness and wokeness are inherently political. That's their Achilles heel--when they become so unpopular that they start costing the Democrats votes the moderates in that party will seize the reins back and banish their rivals back to the fringes of society; by which I mean college campuses.
In 1992 Bill Clinton demonstrated his moderate bona fides by overseeing the execution of Ricky Ray Rector and trashing Sister Soulja as a reverse racist. I expect that if the Democrats lose a few more elections that eventually they will grow tired of losing and a new moderate candidate will need to find a scapegoat that can be used to disavow the extreme left.
Stage 1: "Oh come on, that's not happening.
Stage 2: "That is happening and it's good, you bigot."
Stage 3 (we are here): "Oh come on, that never happened. What is woke, anyway?"
Which is funny, to me, because stages 1 and 2 track climate change skepticism too.
I am pretty sure that climate change has hit a wall in terms of its influence/acceptance. At this point there is some segment of the population that views it as an important issue and a much larger majority that doesn't.
Again, it's not the thing itself...its the REACTION to the thing. That's the tell.
"The larger majority" doesn't care about most of the things issue-oriented people care about. So?
The climate change denial 'segment' has been stupidly influential and will certainly be so in the new administration, and it has mostly moved from #1 to #2.
And of course, it's not like climate change is going to 'get better' or 'not get worse' through inattention, which is to say, atmospheric physics gives sweet F.A. what 'the larger majority' cares about...or what the denialist segment believes.
I think it's more that the population are large is indifferent to the issue. Polling for the election showed it far down the list of voters' concerns.
I don't think acceptance of climate change has ever been at a higher level, and certainly constitutes a majority. But acceptance (as opposed to denial) seems to make little difference in willingness to take personal action or support mitigation policies. For that there has only ever been minority support.
People don't mind the idea of lots of other people having to make changes, but seldom themselves. To take climate change seriously, one has to recognize that some of the the ever-growing number of modcons may have to be trimmed. At a very low threshold of inconvenience, that prospect is a big turn-off, and the rationalizing kicks in strongly, whether it be techno-saviourism, blaming others, or numerous other dodges.
So majority support seems unlikely. With our trend of becoming a more indoor species each year, I suspect that majority support only becomes less plausible over time.
I wonder about comparisons to the 1960s, which was the last period when the youth of a country was entirely gripped by a philosophy they didn't actually believe in: distributing Mao's Little Red Book, advocating revolution, etc. But that seemed attributable to the Baby Boom, and so many coming of age in such huge numbers, and the Vietnam draft. What was this attributable to apart from social media? Is that not the root cause of it all, that the academic and media class seized on a new technology, gained huge cultural power because of it all, then used it to create a new world of censorship, terror and control?
Yes. All while screaming 'the other side' is doing all the damage, with the same tools.
Musa al-Gharbi’s recent book We Have Never Been Woke is a pretty good analysis of this. His thesis is that it’s primarily economic anxiety driving it—all the fancy jobs promised to privileged kids (media pundit, college professor, etc.) just don’t exist anymore (or at least exist in much smaller numbers), leading to a general sense of injustice that’s screaming for an outlet.
" the youth of a country was entirely gripped by a philosophy they didn't actually believe in:"
The last part of that quote is correct, but the first is not. In the 1960s, the opinion explicitly expressed in the Beatles' song "Revolution" was leagues more popular than Mao's Red Book.
Presently, the two factions most determined to cast the 1960s as dominated by Far Left Politics are the Bill Ayers/Weatherman fringe, who were there, and find that a useful turf claim; and elements of the modern day American Right Wing, who were not. The 1960s had a lot of Youth Politics to it, but William O'Neill's 1971 book Coming Apart--a much more tempered assessment than the conclusions of either the partisan Left or the partisan Right--provides an account that has the ring of truth, to me; the movement of the day was much more inchoate and ad hoc, and largely united by opposition to the Vietnam War. Both Todd Gitlin (The Sixties) and Robin Morgan (The Demon Lover) offer cogent criticisms of the Far Left fringe of their era, despite both of them being located pretty far to the Left in their politics. It's my impression that the rank and file of Woke Youth have not distinguished themselves in their historical erudition--particularly when it comes to reading outside of their intellectual silos--so I seriously doubt that they've read any of the books I've cited.
Politics is creating alliances even amidst differences. Contempt for others with differing opinions is an evolutionary kill switch in both directions. It is not merely corrosive, but poisonous and fatal to the alliance process.
Nate Silver recently commented that the conservative commenters on his SS were thrilled when he agreed with them 50% of the time.
On the other hand the liberals were outraged at any departure from orthodoxy whatsoever, with corresponding calls for excommunication.
“Sad fact: social justice progressives think that if you disagree with them on any one thing, you’re their enemy, while new right types think that if you agree with them on any one thing, you’re their friend.”
where's that quote from?
Nate Silver, based on observations of the people who comment on his SS.
I don't recall.
Yes, this is sort of the point of my comment. I do think it's true there's much less room for dialogue and consideration in Dem circles.
"The left looks for heretics, the right looks for converts."
Parties used to be much more diverse. If Congress was writing a law about guns or abortion or regulations or spending, they would get more support from one party or the other, but each party had sizable minorities and it reminded people every day that you have to build coalitions on one issue with those who differ with you on other issues.
"Politics is creating alliances even amidst differences."
Successful politics in democratic republics is about those coalitions. Ideally.
Ironically, the two-party power hegemony sustained by the inability to rank choices at the ballot box (only two ranks, that's all I ask!) has permitted both the Democratic and Republican parties to demonize the opposing side in a zero sum game, as if the goal is Final Victory by annihilating any trace of opposition.
The insincerity of that hyperbole is a pretty pathetic excuse for a saving grace. It's given a great many rank and file loyalists in both parties the wrong impression--they actually take the goal of total annihilation of the partisan opponents in the Duopoly as their guiding mission.
> but Gallup put out a pretty large poll asking people who had voted to rank the issues that influenced their vote, and those issues associated with identity politics were consistently ranked quite low.
Blueprint2024 has a list about 20 reasons, and they would give respondents 2 randoms ones, ask which was more important, which was a way of finding out which issues mattered compared to the average, minimizing problems with overlapping issues.
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/
Inflation and immigration are the top 2, with cultural issues the 3rd. But cultural issues were most important for swing voters. (But not very important with Hispanic voters, which is not at all what I would have guessed.)
It's interesting to look at all the items in red. No one cares about lockdowns any more, people don't care either way about the middle east. They weren't even terribly worried about Democrats raising taxes or being soft on crime, things the Democrats often worry about.
I understand that you WANT politics to be about "cultural issues"
One, I think there's good polling that indicates that cultural issues were important. Maybe the economy and illegal immigration were ranked higher, but given the state of the economy and the border that's not really surprising.
Two, I think there's a growing cultural gap between the PMC and everyone else. The two groups watch different shows, read different books, listen to different music. And one is far more likely to get married than the other. In that sense the cultural conflict is inextricably tangled up with a class conflict. I don't think I'm the only one that believes that "woke" politics are overwhelmingly associated with the college educated while it's far less prevalent among the working class.
You seem confused. Clearly cultural issues matter to people. Are we going to pretend they don’t?
I don't. It's an insane way to determine policy.
Like I said, I had some surprises there, like the Hispanic voters I categorized as culturally conservative actually weren't.
Here's the Gallup poll btw
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx I'm overall not surprised by all the answers that got more than 10% when asked to name the single most important thing, although "poor leadership" seems ill-defined.
The sub-10% answers are all tiny things you have to be unusual to rank as the #1 most important. ("Lack of respect for each other" at 2%. I love you whoever you are but you're weird.) Even the way Gallup categorizes it, economic issues were only the #1 issue to about 1/3 of the country.
Only 2% of people listed abortion. That suggests the country doesn't care about it. But everyone knows it does matter a lot to a lot of people. It's just not #1, even in the first post-Dobbs Presidential election.
Someone did write the book investigating the topic of woke (or whatever you want to call it) It's called, We Have Never Been Woke, by Musa Al Gharbi.
A review by Matt Taibbi:
https://www.racket.news/p/fine-woke-cannibals
He was never an insider
Well he is a university professor and attended Columbia.
Freddie wants someone like Jia Tolentino, I think. But she, like many of her type, would only do it when it's socially acceptable.
This is a good point. Freddie’s wish is great, but the window is fast closing. If anyone was going to write this article they’d need to do it now, right now. If they wait until all the cool kids are already on board it (1) wouldn’t mean much and (2) will just regurgitate whatever the zeitgeist of the moment is.
He was also cancelled by the right for being Muslim and saying things that were not sufficiently America-loving when he was a young non-tenured academic. That said Freddie's right about him not being an insider. He's involved in the Heterodox Academy community, which is the heretical wing of the academic world these days.
I've read his book and have been following him for a bit now. He's got a good perspective.
I'm glad Judith Butler is saying this now, but it's a little rich considering she supported Kamala over Bernie in 2020.
I don't think anyone's ever going to produce that piece, for the same reason there's never a memo from corporate HQ explaining why all the DEI stuff that was so important 4 years ago has suddenly disappeared. It would require too many people to admit to great personal failing, that they have no principles, got Twitter brained or otherwise just followed what they assumed was the zeitgeist until the music stopped. It's like asking for people to explain why they wore some piece of fashion a decade or two ago that now everyone agrees is ridiculous.
"...how [did] the default person in media...from being, in 2012, a vaguely apolitical center-left liberal Democrat to, by 2016, a relentlessly hectoring social justice advocate?"
...if I remember correctly, Scott Alexander (over at ACX) made a prediction right after Trump's election victory in 2016 that it would drive parts of the US left mad the following years. And woke-style leftism was arguably turned up a notch during Trump's first persidency. That's 2016-2020 rather than 2012 to 2016, but still.
I think a lot of people (myself included) felt like they needed "to do something" following the shock of Trump's victory in 2016. That feeling manifested itself in a lot of different ways, especially the media going crazy with "moral clarity" and visions of being the next Woodward and Bernstein and toppling a president.
It's weird that people now are saying 2019 was the height of wokeness, because in 2019 people were saying wokeness was a 2014-2016 thing and it was already over. We are now on like the 3rd or 4th cycle of "wokeness is finally dead". I think the clear starting point has to be the nerd civil war (the group of events around 2010-2015 like Atheism+, Gamergate, Sad Puppies, etc.), and the collapse of Occupy. If this is really end then the end date is surely October 7, 2023.
Woke 3D; Jason, or Freddie?
“Well no one was actually hurt by these cancellations,”
Sure, by that logic, no one was actually hurt by the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan ... lots of people were hurt, Dr. Judith Butler to start with, Drs Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying were almost killed by the mob, the same mobs did $2B worth of damage, set fires, murdered 28 people ... no one was actually hurt—MY ASS.
I agree. For example, the author argues that Al Franken wasn't hurt. Sure, he's not a Senator any more, but he's been allegedly invited to speak at "Politicon," which the author claims is "a major political convention." Woo!
Weinstein and Heying were not "almost killed", and the Evergreen mob was the "same mob" that murdered people. It was a truly goofy mob and I don't doubt that the two professors were scared, but come on now.
I think there's often a split between a concept at the academic/theoretical level and on the ground.
For example, intersectionality sounded reasonable to me in theory - we'd expand identity to recognize that a white male who was raised in the foster care system is different than a generic white guy, and might even face greater obstacles than a black female whose parents stayed married, have professional degrees, and who have a vast professional network, in part due to her father being President of the United States.
But in practice, it just became a stacking exercise. Black is more oppressed than white, black female is more oppressed than black, black disabled transwoman lesbian sex worker trumps all of them, etc.
Similarly, Butler is right that identitarianism isn't a great way to garner support for a revolution, but I'm skeptical that much change will occur at the ground level or on BlueSky.
Tommy J. Curry (a Humanities academic I have massive respect for) makes very clear-sighted critiques of intersectionality partly along those lines.
Good post! But doesn't it seem like John McWhorter's writing in the Times, and with his books, is a decent example of what you are calling for? I think you are spot on that no one wants to take the L, even when someone as measured and calm and sane as he is is trying to tell them something. Edsall's piece in the Times today is about boys falling behind in school and why it is happening, backed with all this MIT research, and the "reader's picks" comments are topped by people screaming that men deserve zero sympathy. It's ongoing.
I haven't read that article but it's so sad (your statement about the comments). And anecdotally, I know lifelong democrats whose sons have just had it — they don't feel like they belong in this group at all. I mean, these are late teens—yes, of privilege—but who wants to feel like they suck all the time, when you're still forming your sense of self?
I would say that they have no privilege, not when they are treated that way.
But John McWhorter has always been 'suspect' with the identitarian left; he is closely aligned with Thomas Chatterton Williams, and that group. You need someone from the inside.
It's funny, I have the opposite reaction. John McWhorter is an incredibly interesting writer and thinker, but he got infected by the "anti-woke mind virus" and has wasted time writing tedious stuff about "wokeness," including recently an entire tedious book. There's an opportunity cost, of course--we lost what surely would have been an interesting book by McWhorter on an interesting topic, instead of disposable grist for the culture war mill. Sad, to me.