For the Democrats, It’s the Keffiyehs vs. The Tote Bags
What happens when political grandees of a political party lose their grassroots support? We’ve already seen elite delamination happen in the GOP. The wealthy coastal business elites, AKA Bush Republicans, were defenestrated by Trump and the white working class. The traditional center-right political program in support of free trade, the welfare state, and a noblesse oblige forbearance toward irregular migration and urban crime went out the window as well, replaced by economic nationalism, border walls, and a “war on woke.”
A growing perception among less educated white voters that the policies embraced by country club Republicans dimmed their economic prospects and sent their children off to fight in needless wars led to a populist schism that has once again made Donald Trump the GOP’s Presidential nominee. It is unlikely that his successor as Republican nominee in 2028 will do more than paint his policies with a more genial public demeanor in the hopes of recapturing the support of big business and suburban moms.
Could you convince middle-aged Jewish liberals that Hamas must be excused its atrocities because of some post-colonial academic theory?
Does a similar fate await the Democrat leadership? They’ve already lost many private sector union households, and are struggling to maintain their unruly coalition of single women, public sector employees, and traditional liberals, while also appealing to unhinged progressives, who have an unsettling habit of referring to the President as “Genocide Joe.” Can the party reconcile the wearers of keffiyehs with the bearers of NPR tote bags? (READ MORE from Karl Pfefferkorn: Europe: With Friends Like These …)
The White House is doing the rhetorical splits in the hope of keeping their coalition together: criticizing Hamas as well as West Bank setters, providing weapons to Israel and food aid to Gazans, supporting Netanyahu publicly while leaking harsh criticisms of him to the media. A doddering and tongue-tied President is incapable of uniting his party rhetorically and so has based his reelection hopes on two wedge issues, abortion rights and student loan forgiveness, while trying to bury Gaza under a mass of conflicting statements. This is unlikely to save the Democrats from their radical wing should Biden lose in November. The Keffiyehs will blame the traditional center left leadership for selling the party out to neo-liberals, cisgender values, the Zionists, or whichever fashionable boogieman comes next. Recall 1968, when a violent Chicago convention helped bring the Left’s Devil du Jour Richard Nixon to power. The progressive wing then ousted party bosses like Mayor Daley and pushed their preferred candidate George McGovern through the primaries and on to an epic defeat in 1972.
There are reasons to believe that elite delamination will be more difficult to manage for the Democrats. Working class dissatisfaction with Republican elites was largely driven by tangible material factors, primarily the Midwestern deindustrialization resulting from party elites’ embrace of globalization. Trump’s call for a universal 10 percent tariff and the repatriation of industry from hostile Chinese control is at least an equally material policy response.
The anger of the Keffiyehs toward the Democratic Party derives from the post-material affectations of the privileged and is thus much harder to appease. Unlike laid off workers in Ohio, no Ivy League protesters depend on the local food bank to feed a family. What motivates them isn’t looming poverty but the emotional thrill of righteous anger coupled with an intense desire to clamber up the victim-oppressor hierarchy through performative “allyship.” Such are the fruits of elite university education. Embracing hatred of our country, condemning hard work and responsibility as systemically racist, and imposing odd pronouns and land acknowledgments on social discourse are unlikely to appeal to the vital center of the political spectrum, especially in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The parents and grandparents of our young campus radicals can remember when Jews were excluded from the commanding heights of the WASP ascendancy, and women were expected to sacrifice careers for motherhood. Universal values like legal equality and equal opportunity have real meaning to them, unlike the particularist rights assigned by racial and gender categories.
Could you convince middle-aged Jewish liberals that Hamas must be excused its atrocities because of some post-colonial academic theory? Unlikely, so shouting at them instead seems to be the plan. The owners of NPR tote bags won’t be voting Trump in 2024, but they might embrace his successor in 2028 if what Nate Silver terms the “Social Justice Left” captures their party from the traditional liberals. It is safe to say that a Democratic Party led by the likes of Ilhan Omar won’t be more appealing to traditional liberals than one led by Chuck Schumer.
A more rhetorically gifted President might be able to bridge these differences, but such skills are beyond the capacity of our incumbent, who must instead kneecap Trump in court and frighten the uncommitted with dark warnings of Republican Medievalism. A latter-day Bill Clinton would spot the obvious Sister Souljah opportunity here: savage the radicals and reclaim the political center. (READ MORE: NeoCons Awake, Europe Needs You!)
Unfortunately, this administration prefers to shy away from Twitter outrage in search of an illusory middle ground. The campus protesters judge they have little to fear from the White House or the feckless liberals who run our cities and universities. Unfortunately, our enemies abroad have drawn the same conclusion. Fear of consequences is the only thing that controls the behavior of malefactors. No political party that has lost the capacity to instill it in those who wish this country ill either on college campuses or in the South China Sea can hope to retain a durable electoral mandate.
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