The US Midterms Holds Lessons for Both Parties
Why many people can't trust either side at the moment
With most of the results in, yesterday's US midterm elections appear to have produced mixed results, with lessons for both parties. My overall take is that many people feel like they can't trust either side at the moment. This mirrors the situation in many other Western countries. In this article, I will examine the problems on both sides, and what lessons I think they should be learning.
Let's talk about the Democrats first. While they appear to have performed better than many people expected, the Republicans are still very likely to take the House, and possibly the Senate too. Therefore, it still counts as a loss for the Democrats, and some soul searching is still very justified.
Many people think that the Democrats' loss mainly came down to the poor economic outlook, and being the party in the White House. And to some extent, that is true. However, what must not be neglected is the underlying weakness of the Democrats. In the 2020 election, while the Democrats won the White House and both houses of Congress, all three victories were only by narrow margins. In the decade before that, the Democrats also performed relatively poorly in every election except the 2018 midterms. Moreover, the Obama era prediction that an increasing number of college educated voters and minority voters would soon provide a long-term natural majority for the Democrats also didn't happen in reality. It is therefore clear that there is something wrong with the way the Democrats are going currently. (This phenomenon is also not limited to America either. Center-left parties around the Western world are not doing too well at the moment. British Labour hasn't won a national election since 2005, for example. While the current Conservative chaos has allowed them to lead in the polls, I wouldn't be too confident in saying they will win in 2024.)
Some people have pointed to cultural issues to explain the Democrats' current underlying weakness. They think that the Democrats' cultural positions are broadly unpopular. Therefore, they have advised the Democrats to focus on economic issues and not talk about cultural stuff. I differ a bit in that I think it is not actually what Democrats are doing that is unpopular. Rather, it is the overall vibe, the overall perception that people are having, that is the problem. For example, mainstream Democrats don't advocate for defunding the police or critical race theory (CRT). However, it hasn't stopped Republicans from painting them as having such an agenda. Most importantly, many people, including many independents and swing voters, are believing what the Republicans say. Furthermore, in the lead up to this midterm, the Democrats chose to not talk about cultural issues much. They specifically avoided any discussion about CRT, for example. However, this still hasn't prevented the Republicans from painting them as extremely 'woke' at all. It hasn't stopped people from believing it either. Therefore, it is now clear that, just as I predicted a year ago, hiding from the culture wars isn't going to work.
The simple reason why silence on cultural issues doesn't work is because we live in the age of the internet. Back in the 1990s, political parties had more control over their messaging, because ordinary people had no access to the media. For example, the major liberal media outlets in America would carry the carefully crafted political messaging of the Clinton administration, and that would be what most people associate with left-of-center politics, even though it might not actually represent the wishes of everyone on the left. We don't live in that world anymore. Nowadays, activists aligned with postmodern critical theory ideology, who certainly don't share the moderate views of mainstream Democrats, can effectively spread their alternative views on social media, where they are heard loud and clear. While establishment Democrats might hope that these voices fade away over time, there's no reason they will. And Republicans will continue to use them to paint the Democrats as extreme, whether it is fair to do so or not. For example, even though the Biden administration has been opposed to 'defund the police', Republicans have been able to tie Democrats to it, based on conversations happening on social media. In this world, the Democrats refusing to talk about cultural issues could easily be painted by Republicans as yielding to the most extreme activists.
Some people have suggested that the Democrats actually 'pick fights' with 'woke' activists as an alternative to staying silent. After all, President Clinton and his fellow moderates did a bit of that in the 1990s, and it worked well to a certain extent. However, again, it's not the 1990s anymore. Back then, the activists didn't have social media to answer back. Nowadays, if (classical) liberal Democrats actually 'pick fights' with critical theory-aligned activists, they will definitely respond with utmost intensity. Therefore, the strategy should not be just to pick random fights for the sake of putting on a show. Instead, there needs to be a systematic pushback rooted in a robust, thoroughly liberal agenda. For example, they should make it clear that they are strong supporters of free speech, individual-level equality of opportunity, a colorblind approach to race, and so on. They should clearly speak in these terms, when promoting their policy positions. They also need to take a stand against ideological positions that are incompatible with the classical liberal consensus, like critical race theory.
Moreover, liberals need to stress that their goal is to build a better order in society, and they are just as committed to preventing chaos as conservatives. As I previously analyzed, postmodern critical theory ideology is obsessed with deconstructing and abolishing almost everything in the status quo, and it naturally tends towards social chaos. The popularization of this ideology has led to an increasing vibe of chaos on the left, which has made many people uncomfortable. This is what is making the Republican law and order message popular once again. Only by firmly rejecting chaos can this messaging be effectively countered.
Furthermore, to do all of this, left-leaning liberals need to recognize that cancel culture is a real issue that demands real changes, and stop bowing to every unreasonable demand coming from activists. The ideological straitjacket that liberal media has now been put in needs to go, so that there can be healthy debates, which are required to build consensus for needed reforms. Voices that activists don't like still deserve to be heard, and liberal media needs to give them a platform too, if they are to be seen as truly embracing diversity. If liberal culture is a real diverse place, it would also be much more difficult for reactionaries to paint it as all 'woke'.
Now, let's talk about the Republicans. As I said before, the Democrats have an underlying cultural issues problem, brought on by the rise of the postmodern critical theory movement. That movement's goal of deconstructing and abolishing almost everything has led to a general vibe of chaos on the left, which has made many people increasingly uncomfortable. In this context, the Republicans' law and order message has resonated well. (Again, this phenomenon appears to also apply to many other Western countries, which I think substantially explains the rise of working class support of the Right in recent years.)
While the midterm results can be considered a 'win' for the Republican Party, it shows their underlying weaknesses too. After all, this is a midterm election where the Republicans are out of power, and the economy is in poor shape. Add in the underlying weaknesses of the Democrats I illustrated before, the Republicans could have expected to have a much bigger landslide victory. Indeed, many people expected a big red wave, which doesn't appear to have happened after all. I think this means that, overall, independents and swing voters remain skeptical of both parties. Looking more broadly at recent left vs right contests in other parts of the world, including Sweden, Denmark, Brazil, Australia and France, it also looks like neither side has the clear support of the people in the middle.
The truth is, while for many people any order is preferable to general social chaos, what most people want is for there to be a good order. An order that is fair, inclusive and productive. And while many people, especially those who are 'in the middle', are worried about the vibe of chaos on the Left, they are also worried that the order the Right wants to bring about is not a good order. Moreover, if the order that is brought about isn't a good order, it will lack credibility, and ultimately strengthen the arguments of critical anarchists. Therefore, it is correct to be concerned about whether a proposed order is a good order.
Let's face it: the Right does not have a very good record when it comes to building a good order in society, particularly when it comes to being fair and inclusive. Conservatives of past eras had supported slavery, colonialism, denying women's right to vote, maintaining segregation in the American South, and apartheid in South Africa. More recently, within my lifetime, they were the biggest roadblock to gay rights, especially marriage rights. (And let's be honest, it wasn't just about religious belief either, as they also opposed civil unions.) This track record has meant that the Right is not very popular with Millennials and Gen Z across the West. There was some recent hope that things might change, but ultimately things don't look too good at the moment.
About a decade ago, we saw the beginnings of a serious attempt to change things from within the Right. From former UK Prime Minister David Cameron's conservative case for gay marriage, to the US Republicans' attempt to reach out to racial minorities, it seemed that things were moving in the correct direction. Even right-leaning talk shows were increasingly willing to feature LGBT guests, as long as they were 'reasonable'. The increasing prominence of classical liberal thought in the Right, as the result of both the libertarian wave in the early 2010s and the reaction to the postmodern left, led to an increased dedication to things like free speech and due process, a clear reversal of the pro-censorship attitude from just a decade ago. While things still weren't perfect, it was noted for a while how people on the Right were now more willing to have difficult conversations about social issues than those on the Left. This was why, for a few years, it seemed fashionable to 'leave the left' and embrace, or at least be curious about, the Right. If the Right had stayed like this, I suspect the Republicans might even have won a historical landslide in these midterms.
However, just a few years into the Right's reformation, things began to go in reverse. The reactionaries wanted their party back, it seems, and the liberalizing forces were no match for them. While David French seemed to have won the famous Ahmari vs French debate in 2019, just a few years later, it seems that large sections of the Right have been captivated by Ahmari's ideas, with actual policy proposals along those lines being raised in many red states. These days, it seems that the Right is more interested in playing the tribalist culture war game than having sincere conversations about difficult topics. Moreover, while members of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) argued passionately for the merits of free speech and the marketplace of ideas just a few years ago, it all seems to have fallen on deaf ears among red state governors, who are increasingly happy to ban books and punish 'woke' corporations that openly disagree with them. The Right doesn't seem to care about young people's wishes anymore either. Some people on the Right have openly stated their plan to focus on expanding support among middle-aged Gen Xers, and they often ridicule Gen Zers on Tik Tok for being 'woke' these days.
Put together, the aforementioned developments paint a clear picture of a move away from classical liberalism towards reactionary populism. This has not gone unnoticed. People who were long time fans of the IDW have recently voiced their concerns about the Right's 'anti-woke' culture war approach, especially their attempt to build a moral panic using the 'groomer' rhetoric. Free speech activists who had warmed to the Right in the mid-to-late 2010s have increasingly walked away. They correctly see that a movement that incites moral panic can never be good news for free speech. Some older millennials, whom had become conservative curious due to the excesses of the postmodern left just a few years ago, are now running away, the prospect of the return of state enforced religious morality enough to turn them off immediately. All this means that the Right has lost a chunk of supporters in the last few years, many of them serious intellectuals. They have lost confidence in the Right's credibility in being committed to building a fair and inclusive social order, with good reason.
Right now, the people in the middle can't trust the left, because they have a chaos problem. They can't trust the right either, because they are worried that they might repeat historical patterns of authoritarianism and injustice. I think this means that whoever can convincingly come up with a program dedicated to building a fair, inclusive and good order for everyone will be able to win the competition of ideas.
Both the post-modern collectivist left and right are horrible in their agendas