Why Kamala Harris Will Not be a Woke President
Why Kamala Harris Will Not be a Woke President
But Donald Trump could lead to a big woke revival
I remember that four years ago, in anti-woke circles, people were debating whether the election of Joe Biden or Donald Trump would be better from an anti-woke perspective. I remember that opinion was about evenly divided. Those who supported Trump argued that Trump's hardline and uncompromising anti-left approach was what was needed to defeat wokeness. (They never addressed the fact that wokeness was clearly thriving under Trump). On the other hand, those of us who supported Biden thought that Trump's divisiveness was providing fuel for the woke movement (and the far-left more generally), and the removal of Trump from the Presidency would remove the fuel that wokeness was running on. In the end, Biden won, and soon after, wokeness began declining. Based on the objective evidence, I believe that our theory has been proven correct.
Fast forward four years, and we've reached another close US Presidential election, where perceptions of wokeness could potentially decide the outcome. While we're well past peak woke in 2024, I've noticed that many people remain hesitant to support Harris because of her past sympathy to woke positions, particularly during the 2019 Democratic Primary. I strongly suspect that this is one of the factors causing Harris's support to flatline, and the race to significantly tighten in the last few weeks of the campaign. I think this is a weakness that the Democrats need to actively address.
Looking back to 2019, there is no denying that Harris did have plenty of sympathy to woke positions on a range of issues. There is no use for Harris supporters to pretend otherwise. I followed that primary closely, and back then, resisting wokeness was a clear priority for me. The only candidates who satisfied my one simple demand that they do not embrace wokeness were Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. All the others openly embraced wokeness to some extent. Elizabeth Warren was the wokest of them all, but even relative moderates like Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker were pretty woke at times, which just showed where the Democrats were at the time. My point here is that, 2019 Kamala Harris was somewhat woke, but she was far from alone.
Rather than trying to paper over Harris's brief history of going woke, I think it would be more productive to argue why she is unlikely to embrace wokeness as President, thus addressing the anxieties of a significant part of the electorate. Firstly, people change all the time, and they act differently in different contexts. Regarding the 2019 primaries, one of the candidates (and one of my favorites back then), Tulsi Gabbard, has joined the Republican Party, and become a full on Trump supporter (to my disappointment). 2019 Tulsi Gabbard was clearly very different from 2024 Tulsi Gabbard, I was a fan of the former, but I am not really a fan of the latter. Why can't we accept that 2019 Kamala Harris is simply different from the Kamala Harris that is running for President right now?
Secondly, the available evidence suggests that Harris's woke phase was just a blip in her whole career, likely a specific response to the particular circumstances of the 2019 primary. People who live in California have consistently said that she didn't act particularly woke when she was the state's attorney general. She has also not acted in a particularly woke way as Vice President over the past four years. What you have to remember is that, in the 2019 primary, a reason why so many candidates went woke was because Biden already occupied the moderate lane, and Sanders already occupied the old-left lane, so only the woke lane was open to less established candidates. Or at least this was what the strategists thought, until the 'winner' of the woke lane, Warren, finished a distant third behind Biden and Sanders, thus demonstrating the unpopularity of wokeness, even among the Democratic base. My point is that, Harris doesn't appear to be any more a true believer in wokeism than Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar. They were all playing a game that incentivized them to embrace wokeness, and responding to those incentives the way any rational person would. There is no rational reason why Harris would suddenly go woke again, if given the chance to be President.
Most importantly, the Democrats, as a party, have fundamentally turned away from wokeness. It has been observed with glee by some, and with some sadness by others. I personally think it's a very good development, of course. But in any case, it is clear that they are not entertaining radical ideas like 'defund the police' anymore. They clearly want to be the 'normal' party nowadays. Even California is busily winding back its soft on crime policies. Some are even predicting that the radical left could once again become irrelevant in mainstream politics, like during the Clinton era. The fact that the far-left is totally unenthusiastic about Harris is solid assurance that a Harris administration would not be open to radical policy suggestions from the far-left.
Finally, you have to remember that the anti-woke case for Biden, and against Trump, from 2020 still stands. There is no world where Trump isn't going to be fuel for all kinds of far-left activism. Trump is a highly polarizing figure, and his return to power is likely to re-radicalize some of the woke activists who have sort of calmed down under Biden. You also need to consider that Trump is likely to govern from a position further to the right of where he was in his first term, if he returns to power. He is much more aligned with hardline right-wing elements today than eight years ago, when he was an outsider who attracted quite a few heterodox Democrats and independents. He has also burned all his bridges with many moderate Republicans, which means he would now need to rely more on the support of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and Josh Hawley. One extreme begets another extreme, and it's hard to see how the far-left doesn't get a huge bounce in support and energy from a second Trump administration dominated by hardline reactionaries. Whatever little moderation Biden was able to bring about could be forever lost in this scenario.
Why the Critical Theory-based Model of Change is Counterproductive | The Fault in the Left
Attempts to remake society to satisfy theoretical needs are often anti-utilitarian
Welcome to The Fault In The Left, a series where I will examine the major faults in today's Western Left. I intend for this series to run parallel to my other series, The Fault In The Right, in order to ensure balanced criticism of both the left and the right.
Today, I will start the series by discussing what I have long believed to be the biggest problem with the Western Left today: the dominance of philosophical theory, and the selective inattention to realities that are not consistent with these theories. It seems that these days, there is a theory on the left for everything: critical race theory and postcolonial theory for issues concerning race, the various forms of feminist theory for gender issues, queer theory for LGBT issues, disability theory for disability issues, and so on. Many of these theories are rooted in postmodernism and critical theory, which I have specifically criticized previously. This time, however, I will focus on the issue of redefining social justice as the fulfillment of the requirements of philosophical theory, and why this model of change is ultimately counterproductive.
Attempts at encouraging the use of 'Latinx' to replace 'Latino' as a neutral, plural noun to refer to Latinos is a good example of what's wrong with the Western Left today. As you would expect, it has been overwhelmingly rejected by the Latino community, because it is both unnecessary and an unnatural imposition. It is unnecessary because, in Romance languages, the masculine form already acts as the neutral when necessary. Indeed, French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of this last year, during a debate about the use of non-gendered terms in French government documents. Macron is certainly no right-wing reactionary, yet he recognizes that it is not a good idea to unnecessarily change the rules of a language radically. In the case of 'Latinx', it is also a very unnatural imposition, because it violates Spanish grammar rules, and can't even be pronounced in Spanish! This means that it is just impossible that it would ever have been adopted organically by Spanish speakers. I have long argued that people are justifiably skeptical towards inorganic change, because it is, by definition, not something that has been well considered by multiple sections of society.
The other problem with theory-based change is that it is often anti-utilitarian, i.e. it leaves society less happy as a result. This is because, unlike changes intended to alleviate suffering or solve specific practical problems, theory-based change tends to require the complete implementation of a radical set of changes across a wide-range of contexts to be considered successful, because this is what would need to happen to make the real world conform to the demands of philosophical theory. Compare gay marriage and the 'gender neutral language' movement, for example. The legalization of gay marriage required only the change of laws specific to marriage, and it generally doesn't impact the lives of those who don't wish to enter into a same-sex marriage. It doesn't demand society-wide radical change. The fact that gay couples get to be happier, and the rest of society isn't affected much, means that the change is justified on utilitarian grounds, because net happiness is increased. On the other hand, if some theory tells us that all language, in all contexts, must be made 'gender neutral' in order to get rid of the 'patriarchal' language, then to fulfill this theory, changes would need to be made everywhere, including in places most people have never thought about. Given that the vast majority of these changes would not result in making anyone happier, but some of the changes would really upset traditionalists, the net effect would be anti-utilitarian. Unlike the legalization of gay marriage, the attempt to impose 'gender neutral language' universally is clearly unjustifiable from a utilitarian point of view.
The left's insistence on imposing changes that are unnecessary, inorganic, and anti-utilitarian to satisfy their philosophical theory has been divisive, and it has led to a backlash to many legitimate causes, that has made rational, productive change more difficult. The frustrations towards activists imposing clearly anti-utilitarian changes has also led to a general increase in reactionary sentiment, which has been harvested by the reactionary populist right to win elections in many places across the West. I think the experience of the past ten years provides a strong and conclusive case that this theory-dominant form of 'progressive' thinking is very counterproductive, and a return to a more practical model of change is in order.
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).