The Great Political Realignment has been Cancelled
Biden delayed it, and the New Right cancelled it for good
Today, I want to explore the 2010s hypothesis of the great realignment and where it has gone now, by responding to Jamie Paul’s recent article Our Very Heterodox Prophets of Doom. In the article, Paul addresses a group he calls the ‘heterodox’, which he describes as sometimes called the ‘heterodox liberals’ or the ‘politically homeless’, previously associated with the ‘intellectual dark web’, and characterized by ‘support for free expression, opposition to authoritarian extremism, and, most of all, antipathy toward both the style and substance of far-left social justice politics’. It seems like he is talking about people like myself, and that got me interested.
In the article, Paul describes how the ‘heterodox’ thinkers ‘warn of an impending reckoning where the far left’s radicalism redounds to the complete ruin of the Democratic Party’ but this reckoning, and associated political realignment, has still not yet come many years after those thinkers first predicted it to happen. To be fair, I think not all ‘heterodox’ thinkers predicted for certain that the end result of far-left radicalism would be a political realignment. Personally, I used to think that our future could be in either side of politics, or even as a cross-aisle friendship group arrangement that ensures the center will hold. On the other hand, there were those like Dave Rubin who kept talking about the political realignment as if it were definitely happening. (I think the fact that Rubin has since effectively defected to the right shows that, perhaps, he just always wanted to be on the right deep down inside. Even if it is an illiberal right like it is now.)
I think there were a few reasons why many ‘heterodox’ thinkers entertained the idea of a realignment, even when evidence for it seemed flimsy in hindsight. The embrace of postmodern critical theory by many on the left, and associated activist tactics like cancellation and de-platforming, was genuinely horrifying for many of us who still held classical liberal values. This cannot, and should not, be downplayed in any revisiting of that era’s history. Many of us truly thought that the postmodern radical left was going to bury liberal values for good, and we were making a last stand trying to defend those values. It really was that desperate for some of us. The prospect of realignment provided a glimmer of hope for us that there would still be somewhere that would take us in without forcing us to convert to the new orthodoxy, and a new home for us where we could still speak our minds and fight back against the new orthodoxy on the left. I have to admit that, for me, the thought of realignment became a bit attractive during some time in 2017–18, when I lost hope about the broadly-defined ‘left’ remaining liberal. Still, I knew there was no way I could support the right as it existed in general, let alone a right led by Trump, so my realignment fantasies also consisted of the fall of both Trumpism and neoconservatism on the right (perhaps both sides fatally injuring each other in a fight to the death), and the rise of libertarianism to dominance on the right. Anyway, by 2019, when the Democratic primaries were under way, the diversity of the candidates was what persuaded me that an old-school liberal didn’t need to hope for realignment yet, that between the ideas presented in that primary and the people supporting them, all hope of a true liberal comeback was not lost.
The reason why I spent so much time recounting that particular period in the late 2010s was to demonstrate the real desperation many of us old-school liberals were feeling, and how that desperation led us to embrace the idea of realignment to differing degrees. Looking back, dishonest actors on the right took advantage of our desperation, and sold their version of realignment to us. In their words, everyone opposed to the new illiberal orthodoxy would be on the New Right, fighting back against the woke left. (Someone even tried to welcome Obama into the New Right!) Somehow, all these old-school liberals would be welcomed with open arms into the right, even as they increasingly embraced Trumpism and populism, which are clearly not compatible with any kind of liberalism. How exactly the arrangement would work was not well explained at the time, but nowadays we know exactly how it works: old-school liberals are welcomed into the right if they check their liberal values at the door, and start mindlessly supporting Trump and/or DeSantis. Well, thanks but no thanks. If we could put up with illiberalism, why couldn’t we just have accepted the new orthodoxy on the left in the first place?
In the article, Paul discussed how ‘heterodox’ thinkers often mix up the far-left and the Democratic Party, out of either a misreading of the political landscape, or a desire to see the far-left suffer a public rebuke for their new orthodoxy, using the Democratic Party as the scapegoat where this rebuke is to be delivered. I don’t entirely agree. Firstly, the postmodern-critical takeover of the Democrats is something that could really have happened, even though it did not. If Elizabeth Warren won the primary, it would almost certainly have happened. Even if Bernie Sanders won the primary, it could have happened too, because while Bernie was not woke himself, he relied on the support of many activists who were true believers in postmodern critical theory. The fact that Biden won the primary was the turning point. Biden was the candidate of the old Democratic establishment, the same kind of people who supported Bill Clinton in the 1990s. While I’m no fan of the establishment, they are still much preferable to critical theory revolutionaries, from a classical liberal point of view. Hence, while Biden was not my first choice in the primary, his victory still gave me confidence that we could stop the postmodern-critical far-left, and was thus much welcomed. Secondly, the desire to see the far-left suffer a public rebuke was real, but it was out of genuine fear of liberalism collapsing if that did not happen. If nobody rebuked cancel culture, it could become the new norm! The way I see things is that the rebuke was delivered, back on Super Tuesday 2020. By voting for Biden, the Democratic base itself sent the message that the far-left revolution was not wanted. Since then, the old establishment have become bolder in shutting down unreasonable far-left phenomenon like cancel culture and ‘defund the police’. Super Tuesday 2020 was the starting point for the collapse of wokeism we saw in the past few years.
Now that the postmodern-critical far-left revolution wasn’t happening anymore, there was no need for a realignment anymore. It’s true that Biden and the old Democratic establishment might not be our favorite solution, but at least it staved off the need for realignment, which was first set off by the very real fear of postmodern criticalism becoming the new orthodoxy across the broad left. My ideal progressive movement would consist of things like a UBI and more consideration for world peace, but staving off the postmodern takeover would be enough relief for now. Thus Biden has at least delayed any realignment. Meanwhile, the right has gotten even more populist and authoritarian since the late 2010s. The War on Disney and ‘woke corporations’, Don’t Say Gay laws, abortions bans, book bans and drag bans have been enacted by the right, and in North Carolina they are even proposing to revive a statewide ban on wearing masks! Post-pandemic, the right has gone fully illiberal, and has become a real menace to freedom. Remember I said that I would only be comfortable realigning to the right if libertarians were dominant there? Well, the opposite has happened. Libertarianism appears to be dead on the right, given the lack of challenges from within the right to the aforementioned illiberal actions, so I’m surely not joining the right anytime soon. Therefore, for honest classical liberals at least, while Biden might have only indefinitely delayed the realignment, the New Right has killed off the realignment permanently.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
