RUTHFULLY YOURS

At a time when the world press is obsessed with US president Donald Trump and his often imbecilic machinations, perhaps a more consequential struggle is taking place on the other side of the aisle. Trump and his minions may completely control the GOP, but the future of the Democrats is uncertain. The party’s left is locked in battle with those who embrace the party’s traditional values, like support for economic growth and enforcing the law.

Right now, on a national level, the Democratic Party seems to be continuing its movement leftwards. Kamala Harris is still its front-runner for the 2028 presidential election and representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett, who are further to the left, are widely seen as rising stars. Looking at the behaviour of the Democrats and their media allies, they seem to be reprising Talleyrand’s quip that the Bourbon kings of France ‘learnt nothing and forgot nothing’ after the revolution.

At the recent Democratic National Committee election for the party’s new leadership, there was an enduring obsession with race and gender. Veteran Democrat Ruy Teixeira described it as ‘like outtakes from a humanities seminar at a small liberal-arts college’. We saw similar scenes in November, with the backlash received by Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton when he dared to share concerns about his young daughter potentially having to compete against male athletes. As a result, he faced the resignation of key staffers, as well as threats from one university to cancel an internship programme associated with his office.

Yet even as the national party drifts off the reservation, there are hopeful signs of growing anti-woke pushback in the Democrats’ modern heartlands – namely, in America’s big cities. There have been successful revolts against the progressives in such unlikely places as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle. These kinds of insurgencies could prove the best hope for the party to revive itself in the coming elections and recover more moderate voters.

It’s important that the Democrats get their house in order, as the MAGA movement may be more short-lived than many anticipate. Having won by only a modest margin against an awful candidate, Trump and his conspiratorial, rightist supporters may already be pushing away some voters who supported him last year. His popularity, never strong, is showing some minor decline as he picks unnecessary fights, such as with Canada. His willingness to allow his billionaire bro, Elon Musk, to take such a prominent role in government, despite his frequent buffoonish online outbursts, appears amateurish to many. Even some Trump allies fear that Musk and the other MAGA oligarchs are undermining the president’s populist appeal.

Given Trump’s unsteadiness, by 2026 and even more so by 2028, whoever controls the Democrats has a good shot of winning the presidential sweepstakes. If I were a partisan Republican, I would be rooting for continued the ascendency of the progressive ideologues. At the moment, the Democrats seem intent on continuing to lose. The new party head, Minnesota’s Ken Martin, is a close ally of failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz. Walz himself has even mooted running for president in 2028.

Many Democrats still foolishly see their often hysterical resistance to Trump – and the populist policies that got him elected – as the ticket to a political comeback. In Denver, Democratic mayor Mike Johnston wants to evoke Tiananmen Square-style protests to block evictions of criminal migrants. In California, faced with a dismal fiscal picture even before the fires, governor Gavin Newsom and his progressive allies have allocated millions to keep his virtue-signalling climate policies intact. In Los Angeles, radical members of the Democratic Socialists of America – including one who calls for the total abolition of the police – continue to gain influence within the party.

Progressive Democrats excel in performative pronunciamentos, but lack the pragmatic streak emblematic of the Clinton and even the Obama presidencies. Although unwilling to ditch their unpopular stew of identity politics and green zealotry, their hope now is to appeal to an increasingly right-wing working class by assaulting Trump and his wealthy allies. Attacking Elon Musk has become the new mantra for the left progressives. (Oddly, they had little problem when Google inhabited the Obama White House, or when Mark Zuckerberg financed their 2020 get-out-the-vote campaign.)

Ultra-woke policies and disruptive protest tactics will not make for a popular alternative to Trumpism. In recent years, the left’s share of Democrats has grown, but moderate Democrats still represent a larger group. Since the election, most want the party to head back to the centre. This will take enormous effort, because old-school Democrats have often been unable to match the superior organisation on the progressive left, particularly the increasingly radicalised public-sector workers.

Yet pushbacks are occurring, first and foremost over crime. The rebellion against lax law enforcement started in 2022, in the heartland of progressivism, the San Francisco Bay Area, with the defeat of former district attorney Chesa Boudin, a George Soros-backed progressive prosecutor. Last year, over a dozen more representatives fell to hardline anti-crime candidates including in Oakland, St Louis and, most importantly, Los Angeles.

The second wave of this shift has only recently hit, and is especially notable in mayoral elections. Last year, San Francisco elected moderate Democrat Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, over more woke alternatives. Meanwhile, voters across the Bay in Oakland tossed out radical mayor Sheng Tao. Traditional Democratic mayors have also been elected in Houston and Philadelphia. In Chicago, ultra-progressive Brandon Johnson, who is driving the once-great city into financial ruin, is disliked by 80 per cent of voters in the Windy City. His re-election prospects are not great for 2027.

The ideological standoff will become even more evident next year, with more mayoral elections to come. In Los Angeles, billionaire Rick Caruso is itching for a rematch with Karen Bass, whose ratings have plummeted due to her ineptness, as most graphically illustrated by the recent fires. Polls show Caruso with a solid lead in any match-up. Similarly, in Boston’s elections later this year, Josh Kraft, son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is considering what may prove an uphill race against Boston’s progressive mayor, Michelle Wu.

The biggest battle may be in New York City, over who will replace the increasingly unpopular Eric Adams. As several progressive candidates vie for the Gracie Mansion, moderates and business leaders (and a large contingent of voters) are tilting towards former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo, who just announced his candidacy. NYC voters, including Jews, Latinos and Asians, have been heading to the right. There’s little argument that Cuomo is a thug, but as New Yorkers look at how the city unions and homelessness now run riot, a Democratic version of Rudy Giuliani may be welcome.

To be sure, the old Democrats will be confronted by strong opposition from the woke left. Progressive ideology on issues like reparations, transgenderism, school choice and crime may be out of sync with the public, but these are cherished beliefs among urban hipsters, powerful unions, academia and the media. Besides African Americans, the party’s core base lies with college-educated, heavily single female activists. This group appears the least happy of any large group in the country and is far more left-leaning than people with traditional families. This class will be particularly triggered by the recent dismantling of the diversity, equity and inclusion industry and other curbs on the state bureaucracy. This could well threaten their existence, particularly as AI potentially depresses other forms of white-collar employment.

Yet other parts of the Democratic coalition seem to be moving away from progressive politics. Overall, according to one recent survey, immigrants are twice as conservative in their social views than the general public and reject the identity politics central to the current leftist belief system. They are also more likely to be parents than native-born Americans, and parents are one group that has moved to the right in recent years.

Foreign policy is likely to be a major point of contention within the coalition as well, particularly when it comes to Israel-Palestine. The vast majority of the anti-Israel contingent comes from the progressive left. In fact, one new Gallup survey shows that, among Democrats, Israel is less popular than Cuba, Mexico and the Palestinian authorities. Independents, and particularly Republicans, are far more friendly to the Jewish State. Although Jews are an insignificant bloc outside Los Angeles and New York, they retain great political influence in many cities – and they may well abandon the Democratic ship in the coming years if the party stays to the left. Right now, the focus is within the Democratic Party – both Lurie and Kraft are Jewish.

Ultimately, though, the battle will be about economics. As Ruy Teixeira argues, rather than inviting working-class minorities to see themselves as ‘oppressed’, Democrats would do better addressing their everyday concerns. This long-standing party bastion is now shifting to the right, as well as swelling in numbers. Non-whites now make up over 40 per cent of America’s working class and will constitute the majority by 2032.

The clear failure of Bidenomics is also one reason why so many oligarchs on Wall Street and Silicon Valley stopped financing Democrats in favour of Trump. Most notably, they balked at rising inflation and an ever growing regulatory burden. Another reason lies in the evident failure of blue-state economies like California, Illinois and New York to compete successfully with the likes of deep-red Texas, South Carolina and Florida.

By 2028, many in the oligarchy, now playing footsie with MAGA, may be looking for alternatives. Growing concerns about Trump’s policies, notably tariffs, are starting to be voiced by the business elite, even as they broadly genuflect to the president. Many ordinary voters may not find the Trumpian elixir of tax cuts and possibly reduced government spending to their liking. The fact that the average voter is still suffering from declines in real wages that occurred under Biden could soon begin to undermine support for the MAGA agenda, even among its base.

Critically, neither Trump nor his combative vice-president, JD Vance, have the charm of Ronald Reagan or the savvy of Richard Nixon. But as the GOP becomes more vulnerable, Democratic messaging must move away from race and climate, and instead focus on issues like inflation, rising crime, poor schools and the threat to livelihoods posed by draconian green policies.

For the moderates, the challenge will be to come up with an economic programme that works yet, unlike progressive policies, does not squash middle-class aspirations or business growth. The Trumpian drift, under libertarian influence, may end up consolidating the economy in ever fewer hands. In arguing against MAGA, it would be wiser to appeal to populist sentiments with something other than clearly dysfunctional, and unpopular, socialist ideas.

Like their forebears in the Clinton administration, Democrats need to blend intervention with reform and respect for private initiative. There are elements of both Trump and Biden’s economic plans – notably to revive the US industrial base – that could be built on. Investments in infrastructure, managed sensibly, are a traditional Democratic elixir. Finally, finding a charming face – say, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro or Kentucky’s Andy Beshear – may be key to turning the corner.

The Democrats may be reeling from November’s defeat, but the party’s future still matters enormously. America and the world need a credible alternative to both wokism and MAGAism.

Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, a presidential fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute.