(Credit for the voiceover for this article goes to the great Samuel Lipson)
Nearly ten years after the beginning of Senator Bernie Sanders’s improbably successful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2016, the American left is in a strange, contradictory state. On paper, it has largely struggled to live up to the opportunities that seemed to be so plentiful after Bernie’s historically strong 2016 performance and Clinton’s shocking loss. Despite high initial expectations, early primary victories, and a brief period of frontrunnership, Bernie’s follow-up run in 2020 resulted in a stark regression from the support of his initial bid. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, once the largest grouping of its kind on the Democratic side of the aisle, is now once again smaller than the New Democrat Coalition in the current Congress. A much-heralded progressive partnership with the Biden White House quickly turned out to be sporadic and one-sided, with mainstream and centrist liberals holding most important appointments and driving the agenda in the administration. And even when the White House’s policy on the Gaza War proved intolerable, the left found itself incapable of recruiting someone to run even a token opposition campaign. When the primaries finally came, it was forced to register its dissatisfaction through write-ins, uncommitted votes, and black ballots. Both pro-life Democrats in 2012 and anti-Trump Republicans in 2020 received more representation.
Put together, one gets a familiar impression of a movement on the margins As a general assessment, this is true. At the same time, however, it is also true the left and its ideas have dominated the post-election discussion about the results and their impact. As soon as the election was called, centrists shelved their drafts celebrating the success of Kamala Harris’s centrist strategy to declare that the results represented a rejection of progressivism first and foremost. They have crafted entirely new and deeply contorted theories of politics from the ground up to lay the defeat of an 82-year-old lifelong moderate at the feet of a movement he thoroughly defeated and constantly disavowed. As time has passed, their rhetoric has become increasingly personal and hysterical, to the point that one of their biggest new ideas is that all of the people who disagree with them from the left are mentally ill.
This manic defensiveness is principally a response to one major, unavoidable truth: that, for whatever its faults may be, the Bernie Sanders style of politics stands alone as the only major Democratic approach to not be tried during the Trump era. Of those who weren’t drawn to his post-election critique on its merits, there are many who have taken a look towards it due to the dearth of credible alternative explanations. The dream that once dominated the American left-of-center—that Trump was an aberration and that politics could be returned to a state of pre-MAGA normalcy—is dead. Race-first explanations that downplayed the role of the economy and anti-establishment sentiment in Trump’s appeal have been shattered by his massive gains with nonwhite voters. Even Bernie’s signature cross-partisan appeal, once derided as proof of his lack of purity, has become the new liberal holy grail in the wake of Trump’s now-mythical podcast blitz. While some have admitted it and others have not, the liberal commentators now searching for a left-wing Joe Rogan are, in reality, trying to find a way to make up for the mistakes they made by rejecting Bernie and his brand.
Despite how this moment may feel, this is a unique opportunity for those of us on the left. The reckoning that we thought would be inevitable following Clinton’s failure in 2016 now, at long last, seems to finally be occurring. The deference towards the party’s leaders appears that defined the initial resistance appears to be slipping, and even the most obstinate no longer claim that Trumpism can be defeated through simple condemnation. It’s arguably the only cause for optimism in the current moment, so it’s extremely important to get things right. For as tempting as it may be to see our preferred form of politics as a self-evident antidote to Trumpism, it’s also true that more than a few politicians have attempted to put our theory into practice, and that the results aren’t as straightforward as many often claim. For the sake of having both a coherent, credible argument for our side and for having the best chance of success in the case that we do take the wheel, it’s important for us to understand the actual appeal of our side as clearly as we can. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Trump-era progressive electoral track record, and why the most promising example comes from a place you might not expect.
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