There’s a moment in O Brother, Where Art Thou? when the Southern governor, in the fight for his political life, wonders how he can beat a reform candidate promising a better future. One of the governor’s dimwitted sons suggests, “People like that reform. Maybe we should get us some.”
The governor hits his son and demands, “How we gonna run reform when we're the damn incumbent!”
Flash-forward to 2024, and apparently the Democrats have figured out how to do just that.
Despite the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris has spent the last four years as the second-most powerful human on planet Earth, the campaign to move her to the No. 1 spot is being run as though she is – somehow – a challenger. She’s spent the last few months promising all the reforms she’ll introduce on “Day One,” ignoring that she’s been in charge for 1,000 days.
When Gov. Tim Walz last week told a crowd, “We can’t afford another four years of this,” it was a gaffe we all laughed at. But a polished Harris-Walz advertisement released this week now encourages Americans to “Choose Change!”
Of course, no one would want to run on the economic and foreign policy disasters of the Biden-Harris Administration, but the refusal to take ownership of one’s past is symptomatic of a greater pathology of the modern left. The fundamental, irreconcilable difference between conservatives and so-called progressives is the way we look at the past and the future.
It has been said that a conservative is someone who just wants it to be the past. This psychological disposition could also be why people tend to get more conservative as they get older, it’s also why a phrase like “Make America Great Again” resounds so well with us. (It’s why Ronald Reagan used it in 1980.) Conservatives’ approach to governance fits with this idea: do a good job, then ask voters to evaluate re-election based on how well it worked.
But if conservatives want it to be the past, “progressives” are stuck in an impossible future – one that can only exist if they have absolute power. This is in spite of the innumerable, intractable evidence that when Democrats get absolute power, ruin follows.
While outlets like Fox have been pointing at San Francisco, Seattle, and other hopelessly blue fiefdoms for years, the irrefutable tragedy of 21st Century Democrat “leadership” is so bad that even The New York Times had to admit, “Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality.”
But when held accountable for their record, Democrats will insist it’s simply because they don’t have enough power. No Democrat has actually run on their record since Bill Clinton … who incidentally used the phrase “Make America Great Again” in both 1992 and 2008.
This pathological futurism is also why the left deploys such fearmongering that it inspires riots and would-be assassins. Democrats can’t possibly contest Donald Trump’s record – when the economy roared and there was peace in the Middle East – so everything is a dire warning about the threat! he! poses! to! our! democracy!
(Spoiler: if Trump were a dictator, he’d still be in office.)
This belief in an impossible, perfect, authoritarian future is even in the language they use. Because traditional liberal values stand in the way of absolute power, Democrats have long since discarded the word liberal in favor of much more glorious “progressive.” They can use that to mean whatever they want it to mean.
Now, when Teddy Roosevelt adopted the word progressive as part of his New Nationalism, he meant that the government had to flex its muscles to protect normal people from the brutal corporatism of the Gilded Age. Progressive used to mean actually making America a more equitable place, now it’s the opposite. It’s just a new elitism of electric cars, gated communities, and cheap immigrant labor. 21st Century progressivism means corrupt multinationals wave rainbow flags, black fists, and green logos as a smokescreen – or wokescreen – to conceal their abusive labor and environmental practices.
But somehow Harris is going to finally make American equality a reality while pulling in record cash hauls from Wall Street. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders trashes billionaires at the DNC, right before a billionaire comes out to speak about how woke he is. The real threat to our democracy is elitists' promise about a better future, and those so successfully manipulated they can’t see through the lies. Someone needs to make liberalism liberal again.
But if that doesn’t happen, all our hopes rest on the upcoming election. People like that reform. I hope we get some.