The Left always likes to portray itself as the angry party. It defines itself by its ability to champion causes that recall the French Revolution’s trilogy of liberty, equality, and fraternity and the mob storming the Bastille.
Wherever there are restrictions -- even legitimate ones -- the Left calls for liberation and license. Where differences appear -- even natural ones of talent or effort -- the Left denounces them as injustice and demands absolute equality. The angry party is always looking for a good revolution to incite or a crisis not to waste.
However, this angry party image is now in trouble in America. Since the last election, the Left has been rudderless, disoriented, and uninspired. It has gone from being the party of clamor to that of whining. There is no thunder on the Left, only incoherent rants.
A Global Populist Movement
This lack of direction is a sign that something major has gone awry. It is not a matter of tweaking, framing, or remessaging. Some observers suggest that the world is transitioning from one historical epoch to another. The debate shifted, and the Left was left behind.
The New York Times editorial writer David Brooks, who himself shifts from Left to Right as the mood seizes him, describes the current phenomenon as “a world-shifting political movement” affecting both the Left and the Right. He compares it to the Communist Revolution, the New Deal, the Sixties, feminism, the LGBTQ+ revolution and other key movements that marked modernity.
He calls this massive shift the “global populist movement.” It is characterized by a general distrust of social structures, governmental programs, and institutions. People consider everything to be “rigged, corrupt and malevolent.” They question everything, harbor social resentment and demand signals of trust.
A Failure to Adapt
Brooks thinks conservatives have taken note of this new movement and begun to adapt. However, most rank-and-file leftists did not get the memo and cling to old, exhausted models and rhetoric that no longer reflect how things have changed.
Between lattes, the Left’s wealthy liberal elites are still looking for downtrodden masses to hail. They are stuck with outdated leftist scripts that are too worn to refresh. They claim to speak in the name of “the people,” with whom they rarely associate.The Wrong Focus
Angry leftist narratives have always focused on attacking power structures based on the erroneous Marxist idea that everything can be reduced to power and money. They automatically divide society into haves and have-nots. Every problem can be resolved by taking money away from those who have too much and throwing it, as government funding, at those they deem have too little.
Since the sixties, the Left has concentrated on infiltrating and conquering the institutions of power: academia, media, industry, culture, and government. It has succeeded fabulously and used its new-found power to redistribute wealth and suppress the Right.
The problem with taking over institutions of power is that one becomes identified with them. Together with power, the Left also assumed complacent and bourgeois attitudes.
Thus, the Left neglected the “proletariat” of ordinary Americans and adopted a new, more learned and sophisticated one with an alphabet soup of LGBTQ-type causes associated with identity politics. From its positions of influence and control, the Left became woke and imposed a cancel culture on all who stood in their way.
Responding to Cancel Culture
In response, the Right complained bitterly of this oppression, took up the cause of working (not woking) class Americans, proposed credible alternatives and won elections. It spoke to voters in a language they could understand and reassured them that they mattered.
However, from the comfort of its ivory towers, movie studios, and corporate C-suites, the Left’s response to electoral defeat has been to return to its tired and spent rhetoric. The problem is that the Left cannot return to its angry politics against the establishment because it is that establishment.
This leftist establishment is disconnected from the American reality and mesmerized by an alternative woke reality. To put it bluntly, in 2024 electoral terms, the Left now represents they/them, not you.
Return to the Culture
Thus, conservatives have successfully shifted the debate from the economic field to the cultural one. Accordingly, before the Left can propose anything credible in the economic field again, it will need to reconnect with the culture first. David Brooks claims, “The Left can’t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right: faith, family, flag, respect for people in all social classes.”
In other words, what Brooks is saying is that if the Left ever wants to win again, it must stop being yesterday’s angry Left. In this historical movement of resentment and distrust, the Left has become the easy target of an army of forgotten and aggrieved voters.
The only way to placate them is for the Left to change. It must speak to voters in soft, reassuring, and patriotic language to earn the trust of the man on the street. Its radicals need to tone down their message and pronoun usage. They must eat less organic avocado toast and more apple pie.
The Left must rein in its woke activists who, like trans athletes, are running unfairly and far ahead of a public that only wants normalcy. It must get its pseudo-champions to return their ill-gotten trophies.
Such a dramatic shift might mean throwing corrupt union cronies, border haters, tree huggers, and police defunders under the bus.
Brooks argues that mastering such contradictions is what it will take for the Left to navigate “the tectonic shift” that lies ahead.
That is why the Left is in big trouble. To survive, it must rewire its DNA. The party born of rage that feeds on unbridled passions must now go lite. It is an existential challenge. Brooks is asking the Left to come up with a new identity and grand narrative that will “take decades.”
This new image that Brooks prescribes as a remedy will make many angry leftists angry. It is not only that they see no need to change, but they also don’t know how to make it happen. They will double down on their old turf of Marxist boilerplate. The Left cannot understand why David Brooks says that, at the height of power, having full mastery of the institutions and believing itself victorious, it must “think anew.”
What Brooks did not mention is that the anger of the radicals might turn to despair when they finally realize the Left has nothing new about which to think.
