How Utterly Lost Is The Left?

[trumptman]

How Utterly Lost Is The Left?

From UK's Labour to the response to Charlie Kirk in the US, it's paralyzed.

andrewsullivan.substack.com

A great and thoughtful read...

Key points...

At one point, I even tried to imagine what America would be like today if this woke lawyer had actually won last year.

Then it occurred to me that we already kind of know. We actually have a pretty good test case of exactly that: a center-left lawyer-politician coming to power last year after a massive immigration wave had discredited and ousted the previous incumbent. Enter Keir Starmer, my high school frenemy, and now prime minister.

But unlike Harris, Starmer has at least shown signs of understanding his problem: he kicked the far-left Corbynites out of the party, called out anti-semitism, and in his big speech to his party’s annual conference this week, spoke proudly of flying the Union Jack, saying “we placed too much faith in globalization.” In office, he backed Israel’s war against Hamas strongly for a year-and-a-half, followed the science by banning puberty blockers and sex changes for kids, tightened immigration rules a bit, and pursued deregulation of the private sector, especially housing.

So what if you had a leftist politician who managed to beat Trump and was now leading the United States aka Harris won, it might look and sound a bit like this....

The problem? It would still be deeply unpopular and well on it's way to losing again.

I point this out to show that rhetorically, Starmer has definitely moved to the center. And yet still ... he sinks. The far left is seen as toxic, but the soft left is deemed something even worse: lame and insincere. Does this prove that the Dems should avoid the center touted by yours truly, because compromise will make them seem weak and still unable to compete with the real populists? Or has Keir not actually gone far enough?

Not far enough and not by a long shot.

Keir, in other words, wants to keep the elite’s core policy while changing the tone and some substance. Reform actually wants to reverse the elite policy and stop illegal and legal immigration, period. Reform is taking seriously the sense that Britain itself is under cultural assault, and Keir denies any such assault. Everything is fine, if we pretend there’s no problem with Islam, no influx of unskilled workers, no housing shortage, no terrorism, no anti-Semitism, and no incipient civil conflict.

We've seen this view in the States as well. It's not the policies, it's the tone and messaging. "Just don't sound like an academic." or "Just say it while wearing a camo trucker hat." "Just find you a nice politicians who can 'whisper' to the young white guys."

That is a delusional take.

Lefties have finally begun to accept they got immigration wrong and need to adjust; but they cannot actually stop believing that mass immigration is still a moral signifier, a virtue, an elevating repudiation of “whiteness”. As Biden blurted out in 2015, making white Europeans an “absolute minority” in America is a “source of our strength.” The Dems feel they have to adjust because the country is full of racists, and Trump is so dangerous. But they still believe their critics on immigration are “on the wrong side of history” and almost all bigots.

Even if they change the tone, this is what they still think, believe and will act on accordingly. There's no real suffering or problems. There's just scapegoating, dog whistles and hate.

We’re not stupid. No amount of fake rhetorical moves to the center will work. When very basic things that most human beings take for granted — that foreigners are not citizens and citizens come first, that men are not women, that children are not adults — are deemed fundamentally immoral in one political party, that party deserves to lose.

And they will.

Indeed they will and all efforts to make sure they can't cheat their way to a win are also completely justified as well. The woke mind virus is just trying to disguise itself rather than die. It must die instead.