The Atlantic: Democrats Are Losing The Culture War

As we have previously reported, Ronald Brownstein is one of the top Jews in the Democratic Party and now he is sounding the alarm that woke college educated progressive activists (i.e., the shitlibs) have dragged the party too far to the Left on intensely polarizing racial, cultural and gender issues. This is more than offsetting any edge the Democrats have on economics which they don’t even have at the moment anyway thanks to President Joe Manchin and the highest inflation in 40 years.

The Atlantic:

“Maybe Bill Clinton got a few things right after all.

For years, Democrats have rarely cited Clinton and the centrist New Democrat movement he led through the ’90s except to renounce his “third way” approach to welfare, crime, and other issues as a violation of the party’s principles. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and even Bill Clinton himself have distanced themselves from key components of his record as president.

But now a loose constellation of internal party critics is reprising the Clintonites’ core arguments to make the case that progressives are steering Democrats toward unsustainable and unelectable positions, particularly on cultural and social questions. …

For now, these dissenters from the party’s progressive consensus are mostly shouting from the bleachers. On virtually every major cultural and economic issue, the Democrats’ baseline position today is well to the left of their consensus in the Clinton years (and the country itself has also moved left on some previously polarizing cultural issues, such as marriage equality). As president, Biden has not embraced all of the vanguard liberal positions that critics such as Shor and Teixeira consider damaging, but neither has he publicly confronted and separated himself from the most leftist elements of his party—the way Clinton most famously did during the 1992 campaign when he accused the hip-hop artist Sister Souljah of promoting “hatred” against white people. Only a handful of elected officials—most prominently, incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams—seem willing to take a more confrontational approach toward cultural liberals, as analysts such as Teixeira are urging. But if next year’s midterm elections go badly for the party, it’s possible, even likely, that more Democrats will join the push for a more Clintonite approach. And that could restart a whole range of battles over policy and political strategy that seemed to have been long settled. …”

If you own the libs hard in enough in 2022 and 2024, Brownstein is saying that Democrats might execute a Clintonesque strategic retreat on these issues which have made their brand toxic. “White appeasement” is on the table again. Joe Biden might have a “Sista Soulja” moment with Joy Reid.

Everyone knows the situation is grim and who is to blame. Ronald Brownstein is saying it. Thomas Edsall is saying it. Stanley Greenberg is saying it. Jonathan Chait is saying it. Matt Yglesias is saying it. David Shor is saying it. James Carville is saying it. Bill Maher is saying it. Ruy Teixeira is saying it. Even Jacobin and Secular Talk are saying it in their own way. “White people suck” isn’t a compelling message.

The Democratic Party is sabotaged by these people who are serial fire starters in the culture war and who have created so many cultural resentments on so many issues that who can own the libs the hardest is the only thing that matters on the other side. Donald Trump might even return to power and the Republicans might sweep Congress on nothing more than the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon.”

This is the key moment in the article:

“If it lasts, such a shift among working-class voters of color could largely negate the advantage that Democrats have already received, and expect moving forward, from the electorate’s growing diversity. “You won’t benefit that much from the changing ethnic demographic mix of the country if these overwhelmingly noncollege, nonwhite [voters] start moving in the Republican direction, and that concentrates the mind,” Teixeira told me. …”

Ruy Teixeira is the Democratic strategist who wrote the book on The Emerging Democratic Majority which is behind the idea that replacing White voters will be sufficient for Democrats to amass a permanent governing majority. But what if this isn’t true anymore?

The “Latinx” Question is a major problem for the Democrats. We’re flooding the country with millions of poor, uneducated Hispanic immigrants who are more culturally conservative than the shitlibs who the Democratic base based on the assumption that they will always vote Democrat by huge margins. The margin is coming down though because “Latinx” men are being alienated from the Democratic Party. Both electoral trends and the latest polls show “Latinx” are becoming more evenly divided.

How will the Democrats handle this? Will they write off the “Latinx” men as they always do? Will they continue to use a word that appeals to 2% of the “Latinx” community which offends 30% of voters and annoys 40% of them because the party is held hostage by donors and progressive activists? Democrats responded to losing White working class voters over political correctness by embracing Wokeism. This has helped to transform Florida, Ohio and Iowa into safe Red states.

It is easy to anticipate the copes and rationalizations from woke progressives that we might hear in the future, not just from losing “Latinx” men, but from losing White women too:

• “Latinx” men destroyed “our democracy” because they have historically been sympathetic to populist demagogues in Latin America
• “Latinx” men are sexist and transphobic
• “Latinx” men are a “White adjacent” minority
• “Latinx” men are racist against black people
• “White supremacy” has flourished in Latin America
• “Karens” were lying about their allyship with People of Color
• “Karens” will always choose their White sons over dismantling “white supremacy” and “systemic racism”
• “Karens” are the handmaidens of “white supremacy”

As the Democrats have become more culturally extreme, they have been losing more and more ground since Bill Clinton was president. Clinton was able to win states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee. Arkansas and West Virginia only recently became safe Red states. Iowa and Ohio were still swing states only a few cycles ago. Now, the same trend which transformed these states is at work in Minnesota and Wisconsin and is starting to show up in “Latinx” areas in Florida and the Southwest.