There are signs that the Democratic Party not only has adopted left orthodoxy on social and cultural issues but also is still not prepared to tolerate debate over these choices. This is reflected in the hostility expressed toward Democratic leaders who suggest moderating the party stance on transgender rights — a seemingly peripheral issue, as far as the country as a whole goes, that Trump and other Republicans used to portray Democrats as more concerned with special interests than the public interest.
“You have a choice as a party,” Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, commented in an interview on Nov. 6 with a Texas public radio station — after turnout for the former president helped Texas Republicans win big. “You can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”
Hinojosa then added, “If you are going to ignore the political consequences of these kinds of things, then you’re asking to lose these elections in the manner that we did.”
By the end of the day, Hinojosa reversed himself, posting on X:
I extend my sincerest apologies to those I hurt with my comments today. I recognize the pain and frustration my words have caused. In frustration over the G.O.P.’s lies to incite hate for trans communities, I failed to communicate my thoughts with care and clarity.
Two days later, Hinojosa announced his retirement, ending 12 years’ service as chairman.
Those Texas Liberals really know how to read the room.
The first moment I really began to understand the gaping chasm between the cultural and economic left was during Bernie Sanders' campaign in '16. I was amazed when Bernie came under attack from Black Lives Matter for not being woke enough. (And, if you recall, Hillary went after Bernie for not being anti-gun enough.)
I remember thinking, "Are these BLM kids crazy? Do they have any idea how stellar Sanders' Civil Rights record is?" My expressing those thoughts then was shot down by Liberal friends who said that Bernie had a Black voters problem, and he can't win without them. You can't expect BLM to adapt to Bernie; Bernie must adapt to BLM. BLM by definition knows better, no matter how young and politically inexperiened they are, because by the hip Frantz-Fanon logic, if you are an oppressed minority, you cannot be wrong. That's what Gilberto Hinojosa didn't seem to understand, and so good riddance to bad rubbish.
What's my point? In the media, it's assumed that Bernie represents the far Left, but he wasn't far enough left on cultural issues for a lot of Dems–including, ironically, the Queen of Dem Neoliberalism, HRC. It wasn't Bernie's record on civil rights that was in question; rather it was his credentials as a Left cultural warrior. His attempt to push cultural issues to the back of the stove didn't align with where the party wanted to go. Hillary, of all people, was more in alignment with this cultural left agenda.
Bernie didn't want to be a culture warrior because he understood how the culture wars divide and conquer the American electorate, how they focus on what we don't share rather than what we do. He just wanted to focus one really important thing: a more economically just society. That wasn't enough to win the Democratic nomination. Besides, he couldn't possibly win in the general–he was too far Left.
If BLM didn't love Bernie, many populists did, and, while we'll never know how it would have turned out, a Trump/Sanders general in '16 would have been an interesting test. If Bernie went on to win the White House, he'd probably get as much trouble from establishment Dems and media as he would have had from establishment Republicans. He's too far left, right? But he would not have been as outrageous a choice as Trump proved to be. We've learned twice now that being outrageous or extreme isn't an obstacle to getting elected. Being too embedded in the establishment is.
Was '16 the last opportunity for the Dems to capture the demos? I don't know. Maybe. Biden won in '20 because he was the normie candidate, at least compared to Trump then, and it's why I thought he was the safer bet in '24. (I'm not saying that he would have won, but there's a case to be made.) His shift in policy toward the Bernie "Left" wasn't on cultural issues, but economic ones, and, alas, the benefits of Bidenomics were not yet felt by enough voters. And Harris, fairly or unfarily, was too easily caricatured as a Left cultural warrior.
But here's the bottom line. Bernie isn't really that "left" on economic issues. He's a New Deal Democrat who plays a socialist on TV. Poll after poll shows that most Americans like the kinds of policies that Bernie supports, they just don't trust the Democratic establishment to deliver it. Bernie's so-called "Left" politics would be effective politics if it was supported by the Democratic brand. It's the politics that I saw Harris/Walz trying to sell. But the Democratic brand did not align with their message, and that sank their campaign. That may not be the whole story, but it's big part of it.
For what it's worth, here's where I think the problem lies for the Democrats. It has adopted the emancipatory cultural program of the more extreme Left culture warriors because that program feels righteous, and it's what the young people in the activist base say they want. It's about being on the right side of history. But for a lot of people, me included, that program has always felt like one was being hectored into compliance rather than being persuaded or inspired. There was no debate. There was no giving people with more conservative cultural views any legitimacy. They were all racists and homophobes or religious kooks on the wrong side of history. Get on the bus, or get run over by it.
Well that hectoring pissed a lot of people off, and Trump was their club to hit back. The American electorate gave the bus keys to a guy who has every intention of turning it around and running over every advance the cultural Left thought it had made over the last thirty years. There are real victories and there are Pyrrhic victories. It's important to know how you get the first and not the second.
I, for one, do believe that the arc of history is long, and that it does bend toward Justice. But the Taoist part of me looks at change as something that has to conform to the Tao of I,1 the law of change. That law is not found in a book anywhere. It is not explicitly prescribed in a code. It is a basic orientation toward historical change. It's about doing what's right, but what's right has to be discerned in the moment by the wise, the people we should be electing to positions of authority.
Reading what's right in the moment, at least since the 1500s, is something most Westerners have no concept of. They get an idea; they believe it's right; and then they jam it down your throat. You know, like Calvin's Geneva, Christianity in Latin America, Robespierre's Paris, or democracy in Iraq. My point is that the cultural Left is just as much an heir to that kind of hamfisted, hubristic foolishness as those on the Right. The inherent Calvinism that suffuses both Left and Right American politics makes everything black and white; it's either absolutely right or absolutely wrong. We are the elect; our opponents are reprobate devil spawn, and they are predestined from all eternity for damnation–or whatever the secular Liberal equivalent of that is.
The problem is not with Christianity or with democracy–or with what is just, compassionate, and emancipatory in the programs promoted on the cultural Left. The problem lies instead with the arrogance with which both Right and Left want to force their ideas on anyone who shows the least sign of resistance or unorthodoxy. Ask Gilberto Hinojosa. On the Left, there is nothing but contempt for local traditions and customs, so they must be thrown out–baby and bathwater. Again, Lefties–read Gramsci.
This year's 5th of November very likely–we'll see–marks the end of the old Liberal order. If so, it's still an open question what the new order will entail. Our best hope as Americans now is that Trump and the folks at Project 2025 do not represent that new order. Our best hope is that the new Trump administration's incompetence and foolishness will be dramatic enough this time to bring Americans to reject it and give the Dems another shot. It's too early to tell whether they will in fact get another shot, but if they do, will America's establishment elites have learned the lesson of this 5th of November, or will they just stupidly react to the reactionaries? Will they be ready to read the moment, or will they have learned nothing?
1. Taoist scholar Alfred Huang:
"The Tao of I also discloses that when situations proceed beyond their extremes, they alternate to their opposites. It is a reminder to accept necessary change and be ready to transform, warning that one should adjust one’s efforts according to changes in time and situation. The Tao of I also says: In a favorable time and situation, never neglect the unfavorable potential. In an unfavorable time and situation, never act abruptly and blindly. And in adverse circumstances, never become depressed and despair."
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