This Isn't 2020

On new political realities and changed movements.

(Credit for the voiceover for this article goes to the great Samuel Lipson)

From the moment it was officially installed into power almost exactly one year ago, the most consistently striking thing about Trump 2.0 has been how closely—almost eeriely—it has resembled his first term in office. At no point has this feeling been more visceral than the last week-and-a-half. For the second time in less than six years, the national news has been dominated by yet another brutal murder by an agent of the state occurring within the exact same one-mile radius in Minneapolis. Once again, locals have mobilized, the government has failed to defend itself, and the public at large has been horrified into moving to sharply to the left in polling.

For some, the fact that is happening at all is a heartening moment—one that proves that, despite everything, some people out there still do care about their neighbors, and that the American public might not be as desensitized to state-backed brutality as the right assumes it is. But for the centrist faction within the Democratic Party, it is a moment to panic, scold, and whine. Over the past number of days, they have gone forth with a full-court media press insisting that what we are seeing now is just a temporary, emotional reaction that can’t be built on politically. Nothing is to be learned, no adjustments are to be made, and no political horizons can be said to have been expanded. Any policies or proposals that were once unpopular are to be treated as if they are still just as unpopular now or will inevitably be so in the future, chief among them being the left’s longtime call to abolish ICE.

It would be quite nice if those of us on the left could simply dismiss such concerns out of hand, declare that there is nothing to politically fear from any sort of reaction to a state-backed murder, and write off all of our opponents as so self-evidently incorrect that they don’t even need to be addressed. Unfortunately, we cannot do so. The precedent of the summer of 2020 still looms large over the current moment, just as it will for every similarly-sized cultural flashpoint for the rest of our lifetimes. So, what makes this protest movement and political moment any different from the last one?

The answer is simple: absolutely everything.

Absent the obvious superficial similarities in things like the location of the crime and what the big two-word progressive demand sounds like, the budding anti-ICE movement and the demands it presents to the public could not be more different than what we saw in the summer of 2020. The context is different. The shifts in public opinion are far larger and far deeper. The arm of the state that is being opposed is different. The people in power are different and are reacting in extremely different ways. Right now, we have every indication that the hardline opposition to ICE we are seeing could be the start of a durable, popular, and desperately needed movement capable of accomplishing things in a way that the “abolish” and “defund” movements never were at any point.

Because of this, we are now witnessing a defining revealing moment for the Democratic Party’s center. By this point, I have personally covered them for well over a year and have criticized them in every way imaginable. I’ve called them disingenuous, inconsistent, incurious, overly dogmatic, incapable of adjusting, deeply arrogant and everything in between. I’ve even criticized them for their own sake, arguing that their strategy and approach isn’t even in their own interests at this point. But for all that I’ve seen, their reaction to the murder of Renee Good is simply above and beyond every idiotic choice they’ve made so far, and that’s saying quite a lot. The obsession with past feuds, the self-flagellation, the rigidity, the everything: it is all reaching its apex in a coordinated media push so historically illiterate and out-of-touch that it has almost no comparison.

In other words: if you thought I was optimistic that the center might be blowing it last October, you haven’t seen anything yet.