ON THE FRONT LINES: Problem with progressives
2024 has undoubtedly been a year for elections worldwide. From the U.S. to Taiwan, democracy is on the ballot. The biggest takeaway from the recent elections has been a resurgence of liberals. If 2016 was the global conservative wave, 2024 could be considered the global liberal wave.
Take the U.K. snap elections, for instance. The victory of the Liberal Democrats and Labour Party after 14 years of Conservative rule marks a historic shift in U.K. politics, ushering in a new era.
In Taiwan, the liberal Democratic Progressive Party held the presidency while fending off the conservative Kuomintang Party and the populist Taiwan People's Party.
With elections for the House of Representatives and the presidency happening in the U.S., people are interested in seeing if this global trend will also occur.
If there is one lesson to be learned from these elections, it is that center-left politics achieve victories.
This brings up a question: Why do progressives seem to fail?
One of the main reasons is an inability to self-reflect. When a progressive loses an election, the blame is placed everywhere but the candidate. This can range from big money interests to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rigging elections.
But focusing on blaming systems neglects the essential self-reflection, which is far more in their control.
This was especially clear in the Democratic primaries in New York's 16th Congressional District. Incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) lost to Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Progressives were quick to blame the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for spending a lot of money to defeat a progressive critic of Israel.
This only tells part of the story. Yes, AIPAC spent a substantial amount of money to defeat Bowman. But the polling was already tilted before AIPAC got involved. In January, internal polling from the Latimer campaign, independently verified by the Huffington Post, showed Latimer up by 10 points.
Furthermore, most AIPAC advertisements against Bowman highlighted his opposition to President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s legislative goals, such as voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Bowman also suffered from isolating his Jewish constituents by downplaying sexual violence committed on Oct. 7, 2023.
There are many reasons why Bowman lost, including being censured by the House of Representatives for pulling a fire alarm when there was no fire and previous support of conspiracy theories. Still, the main point is that trying to frame the loss as purely driven by outside spending does not solve the problem. Instead, progressives should have recognized that Bowman had isolated his constituency — this was the voters saying they wanted someone different.
This is not a new problem for progressives. Back in 2020, progressives argued that the DNC rigged the primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
They often claimed that Sanders would have won the election had it not been for backroom deals made by former President Barack Obama between moderates Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to drop out of the primary and endorse Biden, leading to the moderate vote coalescing around him.
At the same time, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) continued to stay in the race, splintering the progressive vote, thus allowing Biden to win the nomination.
But there is no evidence of this. For example, Obama only contacted Buttigieg after the latter had already dropped out of the primary and never explicitly told him to endorse Biden. He only informed him about the weight of his endorsement.
Furthermore, Obama was not in Biden's corner during the primary, only endorsing his vice president after Biden had secured the nomination. In fact, Obama's preferred candidate was Warren, while remaining very silent on Biden.
Progressives criticized Warren's involvement in the primaries but rarely mentioned that Biden also had a contender for the moderate flank of the Democratic primary: Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg's expensive primary campaign, if buying the progressive logic regarding big money in politics, should have guaranteed his victory over Biden. But that never happened.
The simple truth is that Sanders had many issues in his candidacy. His lack of appeal to Black voters, most of whom tend to be more moderate, hurt his chances with one of the most reliable voting blocs in the Democratic Party. His reliance on the unreliable youth vote, along with losing white voters without a college degree, spelled trouble for his run.
This trend is evident worldwide. In the U.K., Prime Minister Keir Starmer's moderation of the Labour platform gave voters confidence concerning an increasingly radicalized and unstable Conservative Party.
For progressives to win, they need to self-reflect and consider what voters want rather than just blaming systems. Voters want candidates they feel confident can win, not candidates who will throw temper tantrums when things do not go their way.
Kiran Subramanian is a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in economics and political science.
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