Alienating Progressives Isn’t the Flex Democrats Think It Is

After alienating progressives and losing, Democrats think this is how they’ll win in the future. Are they high?

Photo by BP Miller on Unsplash

In 2020, progressives propelled Joe Biden to the White House. Black Lives Matter, reigning in overblown police budgets, protecting the right to claim asylum, and protecting LGBTQ rights all helped the current president beat Donald Trump. Abandoning those issues and validating the far-right who argued that these were all negative issues is what cost Democrats the election.

Add in the broad support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and it’s not hard to see why Democrats lost across the board. Let’s be clear, Zionism has nothing to do with being Jewish, and therefore, calling out the white supremacist nature of it does not make it antisemitism. If anything was an issue for Democrats, it was backing the redefining of what antisemitism is and what it means. Biden saying he’s a proud Zionist does not make him a semite.

He’s Catholic for Christ’s sake (pun intended).

However, like the tone-deafness about what antisemitism and Zionism are, the same could be said about the party’s shift to the right on everything else. To claim that “leftists” cost the Democrats the election is a farce. Abandoning them is what cut into their base and whoever decided that was the smart thing to do must have their finger so far away from the pulse in the U.S. that it’s most certainly up their ass at this point.

Watching cable news and hearing pundits continue to claim that for Democrats to succeed in the future they must abandon progressives show us how quick they are to point the finger instead of looking inward at their flawed platform. Shifting to the right on crucial issues like trans rights only showed us that they are more interested in being like conservatives than not. That they would rather protect corporate interests over basic human rights. 

One major part of the problem is accepting Never Trump conservatives who paved the way for a guy like Trump into the party as allies. While they may loathe Trump, they are still conservatives who before Trump allied themselves with oppressive policies against nonwhite and non-cis-male communities all over the country—the trickle-down economics bros. Former President Harry Truman warned us about this.

"Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.” - Harry S. Truman, 1952

My post-mortem analysis of what cost Democrats the election covers many (not all) issues Democrats shifted to the right on. It is the only analysis I have seen so far that delves into the issues that resulted in so many Democrats losing. Sure, misogyny cost Harris, but we can not use the same line for every other Democrat who lost on election day. This requires us to look deeper into the issue.

As social media explodes with blaming the minority of Latinos for voting for Trump and demonizing all of us for their dumbassery, it serves no one who wants to reign in Trump’s power two years from now in the midterms. People bought into misinformation about immigration and the economy largely because mainstream media pushed bullshit narratives that validate MAGA Republicans. Instead of debunking their claims, they pushed the portrayals without evidence.

They constantly cite government agencies without question as if what they say is true despite far-right goons sitting at the top of these agencies. Intentionally misinterpreted data led many to believe there was a crisis at the border–that migrants were flooding in as Texas Governor Greg Abbott kettled them into the Eagle Pass area to make it appear as such. It was political theater and the news media knew it yet they reported it without context seemingly intentionally.

Even now, Julia Ainsley from MSNBC again reported that government officials expect a surge of migrants at the border before Trump takes office. The same claim she made many times before and was more than wrong. The surges never manifested because she treated information from those same officials as fact. This is not holding truth to power. There is no evidence to even suggest a surge is coming. No so-called caravans. Nothing.

While many claim that Latinos were disproportionately subjected to Spanish-language misinformation, let’s not forget that most Latinos who are eligible to vote speak English just fine and most of those who don’t are likely not eligible to vote. The misinformation that is the biggest problem in the United States isn’t on social media. It’s the news media that often leaves out key contexts and crucial information to give us the full story.

This is what Republicans cosplaying as liberals on cable news are relying on to convince the voting public that alienating a huge part of the base is the future. It’s not, especially when you consider that most Black people and Latinos consider themselves progressives. Democrats must stop listening to conservatives advising them how to appeal to a subsection of society that will never vote for anyone with a “D’” next to their name.

Taking advice from them will result in more drastic losses in the future. Listening to conservatives who hate Trump is giving the keys to the castle to the same Republicans of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s who were silent as they targeted minority groups and even Barack Obama with constant racist attacks. They are surrounded by racists and bigots who want to use austerity to oppress minority groups while treating poor white people who will also suffer as collateral damage.

Remember the words of conservative campaign strategist Lee Atwater because that’s who those Republicans are. They stayed silent in the face of politics like this:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nig**er, ni**er.”” – Lee Atwater, 1981

Alienating progressives isn’t the flex they think it is.

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I’m a freelance journalist. Find my work at Latino Rebels, Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber or donate on Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp