I'm not sure it's accurate to label Andrew Sullivan a "liberal" within the lexicon of modern American politics, but the word mostly fits. He's been a warrior against woke progressivism a la Bill Maher, but he's not a conservative, despite holding some center-right views. He was a strong, at times sycophantic, Obama supporter. He defies much of the tribal framework that dominates our politics at the moment. He was recently hounded out of his writing perch by a left-wing mob for Wrongthink, and he's devoted countless virtual column inches to combating their excesses. In his latest piece, Sullivan addresses his critics on the Left who routinely ask him what happened to him, accusing him of becoming increasingly right-wing because he fights so ferociously against their increasingly radical and unhinged excesses. The more apt issue, writes Sullivan, is what has happened – and what is happening – to the elite Left:
The real question is: what happened to you? ... Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting — reacting against something that is right in front of our noses? What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history. We all know it’s happened. The elites, increasingly sequestered within one political party and one media monoculture, educated by colleges and private schools that have become hermetically sealed against any non-left dissent, have had a “social justice reckoning” these past few years. And they have been ideologically transformed, with countless cascading consequences.
Here, Sullivan refuses to be gaslit, noting that the intensity of the Left's shift toward hardcore illiberalism is undeniable. Consider, for instance, his point about Obama's rhetoric on race versus today's orthodoxy. He quotes part of Obama's famous Jeremiah Wright speech, writing that Wright's poisonous, anti-American tirades didn't reflect the goodness of the country and the progress we have made:
They expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America... The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
"This is what I still believe. Do you?" Sullivan asks progressives. He also cites data demonstrating that for all the discussion of how far right the Republican Party has supposedly moved, it's in fact the Democratic Party that has dramatically shifted ideologically in recent years:
Another look at the phenomenon: pic.twitter.com/1IKmPx2SlX
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 11, 2021
Lefty writer Kevin Drum explains this data in a piece entitled, "if you hate the culture wars, blame liberals," linked by Sullivan:
I've made this point many times before, and I want to make it again more loudly and more plainly today. It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn't come as a surprise: Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004—and they've succeeded. Now, I'm personally happy about most of this. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that "personally happy" means nothing in politics...by [2017] Democrats were quite obviously farther from the median voter than they had been in 1994 or 2004. And it showed: Our election victory in 2020 was razor thin even though (a) the economy sucked, (b) we were in the middle of a pandemic, (c) voters had had four years to see just what Donald Trump was really like, and (d) our candidate was bland, amiable, white, male Joe Biden. This should scare the hell out of liberals.
Conservative writer Peggy Noonan, a trenchant observer of the national condition, builds on Drum's arguments about which side represents the overwhelming aggressor on our divisive culture wars: "The cultural provocations that are currently tearing us apart do, certainly and obviously, come from progressives. And the left seems to have no prudent fear of backlash. They don’t seem to believe public opinion counts for much anymore," she writes, continuing: "They act as if they’ve got everyone on the run, including those who show their movement the greatest respect in corporate suites and private offices. But I think something unspoken is going on. As a journalist based in New York, you meet a lot of executives, corporate leaders, people in the arts and education. They publicly support the woke regime, speak the lingo, are on board with the basic assumptions, and much early support was sincere. But they have grown indignant at and impatient with the everyday harassments of woke ideology. Deep down, many of them would like to see the left knocked back on their feet. I think the left is overplaying its hand." As Matt mentioned recently, some Democrats are starting to worry about how off-putting the cult of wokeness is to many voters (via Axios):
A growing number of Democrats are ringing the alarm that their party sounds — and acts — too judgmental, too sensitive, too "woke" to large swaths of America. Why it matters: These Democrats warn that by jamming politically correct terms or new norms down the throats of voters, they risk exacerbating the cultural wars — and inadvertently helping Trumpian candidates. Top Democrats confide that they're very aware of the danger. Already, we've seen a widespread pullback in the "defund the police" rhetoric...What we're hearing: Moderate and swing-district lawmakers and aides tell Axios' Margaret Talev and Alayna Treene that the party could suffer massive losses in next year's midterms if Democrats run like Sen. Elizabeth Warren is president. One former Senate aide said it's "bye-bye majority" if Democrats run on "extreme wokeness."
Democrats should be concerned about the "too little, too late" factor, while also sweating over how they can more or less repudiate their own base – angry white progressives and the left-wing activist class. I'll leave you with three items: (1) A poll showing how deeply out of touch left-wingers are on crime and policing, (2) an extremely telling quote about the media's bias, which fuels lefty arrogance, and (3) the latest example of the hard left winning hearts and minds in their own inimitable fashion:
% of voters who called violent crime a "major crisis"
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) July 11, 2021
57% of Rs
52% of Ds
70% of African-American votershttps://t.co/NbYAkoGclh
“Democrats de facto expect [journalists] to be on their side.” This is a broadly reasonable and learned expectation. https://t.co/zJjsaUAoeW
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 10, 2021
Surreal moment in Oakland. About 200 mostly black families rally with police to call for an end to the epidemic of gun violence. Mothers at the stage mourning recently murdered children. In the back, less than a dozen mostly white antifa protesters assembled to jeer them. pic.twitter.com/uuE9Sohhkm
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) July 10, 2021
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