Another Fine Mess
Oftentimes I wonder how much better off America might’ve been to have elected Mitt Romney in 2012. Not that I’m particularly a Romney fan—the man’s a milquetoast finger in the wind, if a competent one, and would probably have made an underwhelming president. The underlying issues of globalization and financialization hollowing out the national interior would have kept on simmering, and still come to a boil eventually.
My “what if?” is less about anything Mitt might have accomplished than what his winning that election could have imparted to my generation of millennial professional progressives: that the political pendulum swings, that you win some and you lose some, and that governmental legitimacy depends on faithfully representing the sensibilities of the electorate even when you might feel that they’re misguided. Instead, Barack Obama’s triumphant reelection sent many on the left spiraling into self-indulgent fantasies of a permanent Democratic majority in which compromise was obsolete and we brilliant intelligentsia would direct an enlightened global technocracy transcending nation-states. Anyone who got in our way had to be stupid, evil, or mentally ill.
And so an administration already practiced in expansive executive power grabs settled into a rut of enacting by “pen and phone” what it couldn’t push through Congress, becoming more arrogant by the day. It was ultimately that brand of smug bullying, and the palpable contempt for voters outside of the blue tribe, that gave Donald Trump’s populist insurgency just enough oomph to power his shock upset in 2016.
As has not been historically rare after multi-term presidencies, the electorate chose to tack back towards the center—to row the national canoe on the other side for a while—and it’s worth remembering how ideologically ambiguous Trump’s first campaign was. The rust belt didn’t vote for austerity or to revive zombie Reaganism, but to roll the dice on something different from the status quo of creeping bureaucratization and managed decline.
Showing up in Washington without an especially coherent agenda, mainly seeking big crowds and to put his name on massive projects, Donald Trump above all wanted glitzy photo ops and crowd-pleasing deals. In his own bombastic pro wrestling manner, he seemed to be essentially aiming to split the partisan difference much as Bill Clinton had done as a “New Democrat,” or George W. Bush as a “compassionate conservative.”
Trump was flexibly transactional, in other words, and with enough wheedling and theatrical negotiation might have helped move the ball on some progressive priorities. Perhaps it could have been throwing gobs of money at mass transit, or casting him as the Nixon going to China who could credibly pass some form of “comprehensive immigration reform” formalizing DACA and regularizing millions while building “a big, beautiful wall” and tightening up enforcement.
Despite so many opportunities on the table, not only to cut deals but to give Democratic candidates a stage to hew closer to the center ahead of 2020, the progressive establishment more or less decided that they were only willing to play for all the marbles. Trump was just a freak aberration, they were certain, he and his deplorables but bumps on the road to our glorious technocratic destiny. Thus many professional progressives opted for a scorched earth campaign of dubious lawfare and total resistance, pushing The Donald ever further to the right.
If not for Covid, Donald Trump would likely have been comfortably reelected in 2020. As it happened, that Joe Biden barely eked out victory even in that dreadful year of death and violence and lockdowns should have been a warning to the Biden-Harris administration to keep their promises of centrist normalcy. Instead, the new regime chose reckless brass-knuckled opportunism, from exploiting the January 6 riot to silence and intimidate the political opposition, to weaponizing vaccine mandates, to casting open the borders to millions and millions of unvetted migrants from around the world. Since restricting immigration had been Trump’s signature issue, they’d show America who was boss by flooding the country with newcomers.
With the notable exceptions of some commendable efforts at antitrust enforcement and reshoring industry, the Biden-Harris administration has too often felt like an abusive free-for-all lavishing benefits on its friends and exacting vengeance on its enemies. The concerns and material interests of most Americans have rarely seemed even part of the conversation, let alone a priority, and it was only with the election approaching that the Biden and then Harris campaign started making some halfhearted pivots back to the centrism that had been the central premise of their previous campaign. And so I was not terribly surprised to see Donald Trump score a landslide comeback less than four years after he’d skulked out of Washington in disgrace.
Today, progressives stand at a crossroads: taking a path of empathy, open-mindedness, and coming together regardless of political affiliation—or doubling down again on rage and demonization. Most of my left-leaning friends and family are disappointed by the election results, and apprehensive about another four years of Trump, but also ready to make the best of things. But after my years as a professional progressive inside prominent institutions, I’m not so optimistic that very many folks who are progressive for a living—whether in government, media, academia, or elsewhere—still retain much capacity to course correct. Those muscles have long since atrophied: the business of progressivism hasn’t been about bridge-building or nuance for many years now, but pandering and rationalizing and reinforcing epistemic bubbles.
I came up about as dyed-in-the-wool progressive as it gets, which is why I studied public policy and moved to New York to become a progressive journalist—which at the time I felt was the same as public interest journalism. Witnessing what’s happened to our institutions over the past decade plus has been to have part of my identity torn away. However unwelcome a shock these election results are to so many, they also offer true progressives a profound opportunity to start rebuilding a version of the movement worth being proud of.
"And so an administration already practiced in expansive executive power grabs settled into a rut of enacting by “pen and phone” what it couldn’t push through Congress, becoming more arrogant by the day. It was ultimately that brand of smug bullying, and the palpable contempt for voters outside of the blue tribe, that gave Donald Trump’s populist insurgency just enough oomph to power his shock upset in 2016."
Not to mention "self-serving". The assumption being that, we, as More Intelligent, Better Educated, More Virtuous and More Enlightened People with better taste and also totebags, we are entitled not only to run things, but we also are entitled to the lion's share of the goodies.
After all, we represent a sort of natural aristocracy, and if the little people get left behind, that is because they deserve it.
Nicely done.