As a red county Democrat, I have long wondered how many actual Democrats really advocate “open borders,” public funding of transexual surgery or “defunding the police,” to name just a few of the albatrosses that have been hung around Democratic candidates’ necks in recent elections.
In my more conservative county, the answer is ‘not many’. Yet polls tell us that these beliefs are held by significant numbers of Democrats. I guess they are in the cities and suburbs and disproportionately in California. At the same time, however, it feels like spotlighting such excessively ‘woke’ policies and their adherents may give the public a false impression of the breadth of such beliefs among Democrats. I still suspect it is a loud, but tiny minority that amplifies this ‘woke’ vibe among Democrats.
In reality, the term “woke” as currently used, provides yet another example of a slang word originating in the Black community, then distorted and amplified by whites to mean something else. As originally used, ‘woke’ means ‘educated.’ Now it is used by conservative critics to disparage crazier white liberal attitudes.
The net effect is to slime Democrats as crazy-ass wokesters. Apparently, it’s not a tough sell, especially when a billionaire is flooding the zone with thousands of TV ads pushing that message.
At Vox, Andrew Prokop addresses the harm done by forms of ‘wokism’ in his article “Are progressive groups sinking Democrats’ electoral chances?” Prokop writes:
What ails the Democratic Party? Since Kamala Harris’s defeat, several Democrats and center-left commentators have pointed the finger at one culprit: “the groups.”
Specifically, they claim, progressive interest and activist groups have both moved too far left and grown far too influential in the Democratic coalition, pushing the party to adopt stances out of step with the median voter on a range of different issues. This, they say, has backfired electorally and will ultimately hurt the people the groups claim to want to help.
“Many of today’s lawmakers and leaders have come up at a time when alienating the groups is seen as anathema, but they should start seeing it as both right and necessary,” former Democratic staffer Adam Jentleson wrote in the New York Times in November.
Other commentators — Jon Favreau, Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and Ruy Teixeira — have made similar points. Some, like Yglesias and Teixeira, have been criticizing the influence of such groups for years.
Yet this critique has been met with an impassioned backlash from progressives and leftists. Some, like Waleed Shahid, argue the blame is misplaced and the supposed power of these progressive groups has been exaggerated. “The Democratic Party has long been shaped by far more powerful forces — corporate interests, lobbyists, and consultants — whose influence has neglected the real crises facing everyday Americans,” Shahid wrote for The Nation.
Others argue that inflation — a global phenomenon — was the main reason for Harris’s defeat, so a groups-focused diagnosis misses the point. And yet others argue that progressive groups represent morally righteous causes that Democrats should not abandon — for instance, that moderation would amount to throwing marginalized groups “under the bus.”
This debate is now in full swing.
Further on, in his “What Comes Next?” conclusion, Prokop writes:
What does seem clear is that, for the time being at least, the leftward shift has stopped since Biden took office. A backlash to progressive activists’ preferred policies on several issues, including criminal justice and immigration, is in full swing.
And, of course, Harris lost. How much blame, if any, “the groups” should get for that has become a matter of intense debate. Progressive group defenders point out that Harris tried to pivot to the center and that the Biden administration’s record on inflation and immigration were her two biggest vulnerabilities. The groups’ critics say Harris’s group-influenced positions from the 2020 primary weighed her down, and Democrats ran into political trouble on inflation and immigration in part because of the groups’ bad advice.
How the Democratic world — its groups, donors, activists, media outlets, staffers, and politicians — responds to all this is yet to be seen.
There are past models. In the 1980s, after the landslide defeats of three successive Democratic presidential nominees, various reform factions tried to moderate the party, arguing that they’d gotten out of touch with the median voter and were too beholden to “special interests.” Some called for moderation on cultural issues, others for new pro-growth and pro-business policies. Bill Clinton became affiliated with these reformers, and won the presidency in 1992.
In contrast, the model of Democrats between 2004 (when John Kerry lost) to 2008 (when Obama won big) may suggest a sweeping overhaul of the party’s positions isn’t necessary. After all, Harris came pretty close to winning. Perhaps Trump will govern poorly and Democrats will return to power having changed little, avoiding a wrenching internal coalitional conflict. And perhaps the apparent end of the leftward opinion shift among liberal college graduates will be enough to effectively weaken the power of the groups.
Another model, oddly enough, is Trump. Before his rise, the Republican Party was tethered to an unpopular “free market” economic agenda involving Medicare cuts and free trade pushed by donor-financed advocacy groups. In 2016, Trump distanced himself from that agenda, and in doing so revealed those groups had little actual power. However, Trump also hugged other groups in the GOP coalition even tighter — promising, for instance, to pick his Supreme Court appointees from a Federalist Society list. Then, in 2024, it was the anti-abortion groups that looked to be a political millstone for Trump — so he distanced himself from them.
For Democrats now, there are some nascent attempts to challenge the group-dominated status quo. Yglesias recently pitched a new agenda for “Common Sense Democrats” that involves moderating on several issues. Klein has been more focused on how to make Democratic governance work better, and says his critique is more about the party’s “broader culture of coalitional cowardice” rather than “an anti-left-wing view.”
Yet others are skeptical of how much Democrats will — and should – change. “Democrats declaring independence from liberal and progressive interest groups can’t and likely won’t happen,” the commentator Michael A. Cohen (not Trump’s former lawyer) wrote on Substack. “For better or worse, these groups are the modern Democratic Party. If Democrats hope to retake political power in Washington, they must ensure that these groups are enthusiastic, mobilized, and remain firmly ensconced in the Democrats’ corner.”
Indeed, the politics of the war in Gaza may be a cautionary tale in this regard. Biden and Harris ignored progressive groups by remaining supportive of Israel — but as a result, Harris faced regular criticism from activists and negative coverage throughout the campaign. The groups might not be so effective at winning Democrats votes — but they still might be able to drive some away.
Read the entire article to get the full dimensions off Prokop’s argument.
The correct relationship with the groups is one in which they do persuasion and advocacy and once they convince enough public opinion then lawmakers move on to implement policy.
This is how it worked with gay issues. Transgender activists distort the history.