Two Woke Critical Views on Biden vs. Trump 2024
And why some Democrats are exaggerating Biden’s troubles
(updated after the Biden-Trump debate on 27 June 2024, with thoughts from the fallout from the debate)
Part 1: Why, in the Name of Stopping Wokeness, I Don’t Support Trump
This is for those classical liberals like myself, who have generally sided with the ‘progressive’ (or center-left) side of politics, but have been frustrated by the rise of wokeness in ‘progressive’ circles in recent years. Here’s a warning some of us, including some prominent influencers (not naming names), really need to hear. I’ve long argued against the idea that anti-woke classical liberals should move to the right, but right now this argument is perhaps more crucial than ever before.
There are plenty of ways classical liberals can ‘Make Liberalism Great Again’, by once again becoming a dominant force in progressive politics. But first, there’s the difficult task of taking ‘progressivism’ back from the ‘woke left’. One way not to do this is the so-called leverage method: i.e. threatening to boycott elections or do similar things as ‘leverage’ in our ‘negotiations’. The leverage method is a favorite of the far-left, and they really haven’t won much policy-wise this way, despite popular belief. In instances like the US elections of 1968 and 2000, where their use of leverage ultimately led to Republican victories, the way they pissed off the center-left and establishment Democrats meant that they were sidelined for quite some time afterwards. Which is why, it’s distressing for me to see so many otherwise progressive-leaning classical liberals seriously consider whether to support Trump, as a way to ‘teach the woke left a lesson’.
Actually, even right now, we can observe how the far-left’s use of the leverage method against President Biden is seriously backfiring, turning off both left-leaning Democrats, whose fears of the return of Trump is beginning to test any sympathies they have for the radical activist left’s strategies, as well as centrist Democrats, who have increasingly called for their party to completely cut ties with the activist left in light of their recent antics. If Trump wins this year, and leftist ‘leverage’ is considered a factor in that result, I believe the activist left could indeed be shut out of Democratic Party politics for a generation or more, as the price for aiding Trump’s victory. The truth is, nobody likes people who spoil the party, which is what those using the leverage method effectively threaten to do, and sometimes succeed in doing. If classical liberals used leverage and were found guilty of aiding Trump in the same way as the far-left, we would be shut out of progressive politics in the same way. As I previously analyzed, being forced into the right is not a good place to be for classical liberals, because we have even less influence and bargaining power over there. We should seriously avoid this outcome.
Another reason why we shouldn’t use leverage is because, unlike the left, our main concern is not with changing the policy platforms of center-left party establishments. Their policy platforms are mostly not ‘woke’ or far-left by any means, and are overall not offensive to classical liberals, even if not perfect either. The bigger problem with the progressive side of politics, from a classical liberal point of view, is what Democratic strategists John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira described as the ‘shadow party’ in their recent book ‘Where Have All the Democrats Gone?’, i.e. progressive donors, activists groups, journalists, editors, Hollywood writers and so on. It is not the political establishment, but the shadow party, that has been advancing wokeness and other illiberal far-left ideas into the mainstream. Common sense would dictate that the political establishment refrain from adopting such unpopular ideas, if only for the re-election prospects of its members. Except for a brief period during the Trump era, when things turned pretty weird everywhere, this is exactly what they have done in reality. On the other hand, the shadow party doesn’t have the same need to stay in line with mainstream voters’ wishes, and can push whatever ideas they like. Hence the proliferation of unsound and illiberal ideas on the left in recent years.
Therefore, what we need to do is to argue against, and soundly defeat, the illiberal-left ideas pumped out by the shadow party. The venue for this clash of ideas is not the ballot box, but rather, the marketplace of ideas. Being a spoiler who aided Trump to victory would be a seriously bad look for potential ‘buyers’ of our ideas in that marketplace. In the longer term, I believe the best way to revive classical liberalism is still via the progressive side of politics, because that’s where classical liberal values originated in the first place, and because having to live in the same party with, and being forced to compromise with the religious right would severely damage our credibility on our core values. The way we do this is by working within, and changing, the shadow party landscape surrounding the Democratic Party (and other center-left parties around the West). We do this by winning the arguments in this landscape, which would require that the relevant people are open to listening to us in the first place. Going MAGA would likely foreclose this possibility for a generation.
Now, I’m not saying that classical liberals who want to work with the progressive side of politics have to vote for every single Democratic, Liberal or Labour candidate. While deliberately using ‘leverage’ to demand things is not a good idea, I would acknowledge that there are genuine circumstances where an honest classical liberal would just have to vote for the center-right candidate, even if they don’t usually do so. The example that comes to my mind would be the situation in the UK during the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020). I think there’s no way an honest classical liberal could support Corbyn over either Theresa May or Boris Johnson, and I’m saying this even though I’m no fan of Boris. The reason is that a Corbyn government would have been a disaster for classical liberal values across the board. This wouldn’t be using leverage however, it would just be honestly voting for the lesser of two evils, while hoping that a better choice is available next time.
Part 2: The Woke Crisis Within the Democratic Party is Far From Over
I also have a stern warning about the state of the Democratic Party right now. This paragraph was written just after the first Biden-Trump debate this year, and what shocked me (but shouldn’t have) is how many Democrats (yes, all of them were Democrats) tried to paint the debate as a disaster for Biden. Biden was always not a very good speaker, and he wasn’t likely to win a debate anyway (unless Trump went crazy again like he did in 2020 but that was always unlikely). Plainly speaking, I have not seen a party that only lost a single debate in a context where the polls are actually too close to call behave like this. Contrary to what these people are saying, a single debate loss is basically nothing in terms of the whole campaign. On the other hand, I think my previous suspicions that some within the Democrats are trying to remove Biden have just been confirmed. Debates were always going to be the hardest thing for him, and this was always going to be their best chance. The way they tried to paint the debate as a disaster, even before it was over, and well before the Trump campaign had claimed victory or the Republicans had weighed in, tells me that there is an agenda here, an agenda that looks like it could have been premeditated.
The fact is, the Democrats had a major crisis of wokeness just recently, where it really looked like the woke ideology was going to take over the party. As I previously analyzed, wokeness was put to bed during Biden’s leadership, with the help of both Clinton-era old establishment types, and old-left types who supported Bernie Sanders. This was always going to leave the woke activists who supported Hillary, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and the like quite unhappy. It appears to me that those complaining about Biden right now (as well as in the past few months) are, generally speaking, pro-woke, and this doesn’t surprise me. Biden has killed the woke revolution within the Democratic Party, just like how Keir Starmer did the same to British Labour. This was the correct decision, because most people don’t like wokeness, even in France, the place where postmodernism originated. But the woke activists are going to be upset. The British woke are complaining about Starmer, and singing praises of Jeremy Corbyn, the leader who led Labour to a disastrous defeat, all the time. If only they could replace Biden with a pro-woke candidate, especially one who could play the identity politics card, wokeness might yet be revived. After all, Hillary arguably did more than anyone to advance wokeness. This, I think, is why some have always been angling to get rid of Biden. It’s not because he’s old. It’s because he is a straight white man who doesn’t embrace wokeism. We need to stare down the woke revivalists. The truth is, Biden is performing similarly to Obama and Bush at the same point in their re-election campaigns, and the sense of crisis is totally manufactured. We should not fall for it.
Originally published at https://taraella2.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).
