Middle ground
Can sanity prevail in an increasingly extreme country?
Just to make it clear from the get-go: the debate about extremism in America is asymmetric. The rump of the Democratic Party remains reliably and somewhat boringly left-wing, advocating for reduced inequality, greater financial security, expanded social services, green energy, and the like. Yawn. The Republican Party? It’s on an express train to Wackville, led by a bronzer-wearing, cheeseburger inhaling septuagenarian sexual assaulter with deep dictator vibes. So … equal?
Not at all. But there is something to be said for the suggestion the political middle ground in the US is shrinking faster than the polar ice caps. A case in point from the Bulwark’s always astute Will Saletan, who notes the two groups of Republicans among whom Nikki Haley has beaten Donald Trump like a thin-skinned drum (or spanked him with Forbes magazine).
“The first group is Republican primary and caucus voters who acknowledge that Trump legitimately lost the 2020 presidential election,” Saletan wrote. “The second group, which overlaps with the first, is Republican primary and caucus voters who accept that if Trump were to be convicted of a crime, he would be unfit to serve as president. Haley’s problem—and the problem for her party, our country, and the world—is that neither of these groups represents a majority of Republicans or Republican primary voters. The Republican primaries have become a test not of the candidates, but of the sanity of the Republican electorate. And sanity is losing.”
Accepting the results of a fairly contested election was once not even a question. Same goes for whether a major political party would tolerate—let alone venerate—a candidate so manifestly unfit for office and so transparently pursuing it for his own keep-out-of-jail needs. Or to put all of this more succinctly: “Can everyone just stop being nutty—completely nutty—for five fucking minutes?” Bill Maher pleaded last week. “The battle for the soul of this country isn’t right or left—it’s normal versus crazy.”
This is where we are today. The heart of the Republican Party identifiable for decades is long gone, a process that began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 but accelerated dramatically due to two factors: the realization among Republican leaders that power was more important than policy, and how that manifested through grievance stoking becoming its only discernible strategy.
But here’s where a smidge of symmetry comes in. There have always been far-left activists: as an Australian liberal, I actually veer more toward that end of the spectrum than a run-of-the-mill Democrat. And I’m not naive enough to think the crazies of the American right wing would actually be less crazy if the far left moderated its positions—crazy is as crazy does. But the reality is elections in the United States aren’t decided by the far right or the far left: it’s the big chunk of people in middle who matter and, for better or worse, it’s the big chunk of people in the middle who happen to live in maybe six states who will determine the fate of this grand experiment in self governance. And here’s the problem from that perspective.
Having lived here more than 20 years now, I know some things for sure: liberals are almost always on the right side of history, but have absolutely no understanding of how power works and even less understanding of competent communication. And it's these failures that result in continual own goals, both because the branding of issues is lousy and because the far left keeps opening the door for the right-wing crazies to hijack the Prius and turn it into a gas-guzzling Hummer.
That’s how the very real, very deadly, very abhorrent institutionalized racism driving the Black Lives Matter movement somehow became coopted as “All Lives Matter.” It’s how a logical and sensible discussion about whether it makes sense for the police to act as social workers and mental-health counsellors becomes “Defund the police” amid hysterical claims the nation will descend into criminal anarchy. It’s how ensuring all people have equal rights has degenerated into debates about gender neutral bathrooms, transgender athletes, and book bans. And it’s how analysis of the most effective way to end the bloodshed in Gaza and for Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist has ended up with Osama bin Laden being a TikTok sensation.
For anyone in the political center—or what’s left of it—there’s a crazy Trump train on one side, and a crazy left wing on the other. I don’t believe that’s even close to true in terms of magnitude, influence, or the degree of perniciousness. But perception has a way of becoming reality, at least where elections are concerned. And the critical thing the far left needs to grasp—and quickly—is that power matters. Winning matters. You don’t have to abandon your principles to be successful, but you do have to recognize winning is the necessary prerequisite to everything else you want.
A case in point: does anyone seriously believe Barack Obama’s views on gay rights “evolved” after becoming president? I’m betting Obama was always—always—an ardent supporter of gay rights. But he was also a smart politician: he recognized the peril of revealing that ahead of the 2008 election in a country where a large percentage of voters—especially swing voters sympathetic to his candidacy—remained stuck somewhere in 1950. So, he hedged. And guess what? After he won, he oversaw sweeping changes that now have him revered as a champion of gay rights.
In this respect, Joe Biden’s not much different. It’s hard to imagine a president who’s overseen the advancement of so many issues so central to the concerns of younger voters, from climate change to equal rights to student loan debt. And he’s advanced those issues in some cases unilaterally, often without fanfare. Yet Donald Trump today leads Biden in polls of voters younger than 35.* It’s insane.
For those younger voters: I get it. Passion matters and you may well think you’ll sleep better at night knowing you clung steadfastly to your beliefs, through thick and thin. But I’m gonna guess you won’t sleep much if Trump’s elected. And that’s the risk of prioritizing principle over power in a system that can only be changed from within.
How do you advance trans rights? By winning. How do you accelerate the green-energy revolution? By winning. How do you reverse book bans, protect reproductive rights, and institute logical law-enforcement reform? By winning. How do you begin to rebuild trust in the institutions so central to this democracy? By winning. That starts with recognizing that appealing to the middle ground of American politics isn’t an act of surrender or betrayal. It’s just being sane.
* There’s also a growing and worrying ideological gap between young women and men.
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.