No, It Wasn't "Wokeism"

Kamala Harris - photo by Gage Skidmore

Many narratives have been crafted to justify the (to many, but not to me) surprising victory of Donald Trump in the recent U.S. presidential election. In media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times, one particular idea seems to have taken root: that the Democratic Party moved too far to the left. By this, the enlightened commentators are referring specifically to identity politics, as it is one of the few remaining leftist elements of the Democratic Party.

The pinnacle of this "anti-woke" shift is Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe reading, in full, an article by Maureen Dowd titled The Case of Mistaken Identity Politics, which presents precisely this argument.

I must admit, this argument is interesting. It rests on the premise that the average voter is ill-prepared to understand the nuances of inclusive policies advocated by the Democratic Party—particularly the participation of trans athletes in sports categories aligned with their gender identity, issues related to the Mexican border, or the reaction from certain wings of the party to the horrors occurring in Gaza.

I fully identify with the causes under scrutiny, but I also recognize that it is simultaneously possible for a political proposal to be both just and unpopular to the point of alienating the electorate. However, I am not entirely convinced that the solution is to hide our support for what we believe in or, worse, to abandon our convictions for electoral purposes.

To this, we must add that this argument is merely a hypothesis crafted by segments of a commentariat class whose support for progressive policies has never gone beyond lip service. It is not substantiated by any polls or reviews of election data.

Still, the temptation is understandable.

Kamala Harris lost support across nearly all segments of the electorate, and even ethnic minorities seem to have abandoned the Democratic Party. On a theoretical level, the thesis that "wokeism" (whatever that may mean) is to blame gains some traction—but only if we are determined to ignore the alternative explanation.

After the Democrats’ debacle, Bernie Sanders stated, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” This is the explanation that many seem eager to bury beneath the aforementioned narrative.

In an article published in Jacobin on election day titled If Harris Loses Today, This Is Why, Martin Loewer analyzes data gathered during the campaign to predict the reason for the defeat before it even happened: the Democratic Party’s abandonment of a message that resonates with the economic struggles faced by the working class.

Loewer compares the reception of the various messages used in Kamala Harris’ campaign to a hypothetical, more leftist economic message addressing the social injustices the average voter lives with, and the results are clear: the economic message outperformed all others.

The best phase of Kamala Harris’ campaign was precisely when she proposed policies leaning left on the economic spectrum to address Americans’ economic concerns. For this message, she selected the perfect running mate, Tim Walz, a governor with a strong record in Minnesota on implementing such policies.

Polls at the time reflected this, with the vice president recovering the margin lost by Biden and even surpassing Donald Trump.

This period peaked during a debate in which Harris performed well, and her polling surge continued. A second debate might have sealed a Democratic victory, but Trump was not willing to take the bait.

After this period of momentum, the polls tightened following a pivot to the center, perfectly illustrated by the promise to include a Republican in Harris’ administration and her embrace of cryptocurrencies.

This election could have been won by the Democrats if, instead of bringing Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban to Pennsylvania, Harris had brought Tim Walz and Bernie Sanders. However, true to the Democratic tradition of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Kamala Harris ended up losing decisively, even to the point of losing the popular vote to Trump—a politician many considered finished after the January 6th insurrection.

Now that the election is over and Trump has been elected for a second term with a Republican majority in Congress and the Senate, it is natural for Democrats to try to understand the source of their defeat. While many analysts and commentators point to "wokeism" as the culprit, some seem to understand the role of economics and the working class’ abandonment significantly better.

The reflection has only just begun, and there will be plenty of time for Democrats to decide which narrative they will adopt to explain this result. Was it "wokeism," or was it the economy? Polling data repeatedly pointed to the economy as voters’ primary concern, with only 28% feeling the country was headed in the right direction.

All of this data suggests that the Democrats' path back to victory lies in a message focused on the economy, not abandoning their progressive causes.

But even if the conclusion were that the Democratic Party was too progressive in rejecting the Republican Party's transphobia and xenophobia, if the decision is to emulate the strategy of the British Labour Party by adopting "lite" versions of transphobia and xenophobia in response to the Tories’ positions on the trans community or migration, or to follow the Danish Social Democrats' path of settling for "xenophobia-lite," by adopting this position, we face a problem far greater than Trump himself: the loss of a meaningful opposition to Trumpism.

Just as Blair was Thatcher’s greatest victory, this would be the ultimate triumph of Trumpism.