Alejandro Mosquera Garcia | The Democratic Party’s ideological ruins

Donald Trump has won. The United States transfigured into a map of rightward, red scratches: a nation trending right in its entirety. Populist conservatism swayed the ideological war with unprecedented numbers. America shifted rightward from 2020 by 14 percentage points for young women, 29 for young men, and 16 and 14 for Black and Latino voters, respectively. Kamala Harris’ nationalist liberalism fell short in the face of a clear populist surge. On the ruins of an ideology defeated, we must ask ourselves: What are the Democrats running toward? 

Constrained by the ideological rules set by Trump’s rhetoric, Kamala Harris campaigned on nationalist liberalism. In the ideological realm, Trump monopolized all class rhetoric against his idea of elitist "wokeism,": framing America as a “garbage-can” nation prey of a progressive coastal elite. Trump pushed Harris towards a rhetoric of nationalist pride for the victories of Selma, Stonewall, and the military, although mute about those of the labor movement. Democrats dismissed class and labor issues to focus on social justice: a topic that rang hollow to many voters deeming their civil rights protected under their state’s legislation. And many voters, unbothered by the details of American policy-making, were left with the deceiving picture of a Biden administration incapable of codifying Roe v. Wade. 

Such rhetoric has let Trump run free. He exploited the evident class struggle of an unequal America under the complacency of an administration that, although decisive in its support of the labor movement, has chosen to restrict these achievements from its rhetoric, given its aim at the moderate vote. Trump’s rejection of identity politics allowed conservatism to create something bigger: a male-based identity politic. Via the dismissal of social justice, Trumpism came to politicize masculinity: claiming “male loneliness” as a real issue and seeking the empowerment of men through the politics of anti-wokenness and return to tradition. This phenomenon gained Trump a 12-point advantage with male voters and a 10-point advantage with the traditionally Democrat Latino men — a 35-point swing for the demographic. 

The loss of the Latino male vote is a consequence of the Democrats' reductionism of identity politics. The assumption that minority voters are spiritually conferred a strong sense of social justice solely based on the burden of their social oppressions overlooks the class and cultural phenomena that shape these groups. The infantilization of minority voters as a pure electoral monolith ignores the composition of a demographic marked by the inequalities of their nations: a Latino community of both the anchor babies of undocumented farmers and expatriated oligarchs, of both the survivors of left-wing regimes and right-wing paramilitary conflict. The Latino community is the product of societies victim to stark inequality: hosts of widespread conservatism as a result of feudal education access. These conditions make our region the home of more than half of the top 25 nations for femicides and the most economically unequal region worldwide. To assume Latinos leave their class, race, and gender prejudice behind at the U.S. Customs office is naïve, but is also dangerous to assume these phenomena are inherent to ethnic identity. 

A redux of identity theory would suggest that many Latino voters are simply bigoted, understanding their rightward swing as a mere attempt for cultural assimilation to the white man. Such a narrative has already been unleashed: overlooking the shortcomings of a Democratic Party unable to recognize the political autonomy of minority groups while suggesting the interests of these groups might not be politically beneficial anymore. With an imminent Democratic spin to the center, we must expect moderation similar to that of left-of-center Europeans: a new liberalism of cautious opposition to immigration, but open to social justice. However, both in today’s France and 2016 America, liberal moderation has paled to right-wing populism: perpetually requiring further rightward movement as underlying social issues remain unaddressed. 

This perpetual rightward motion, coupled with conservative immigrant majorities, creates the incentives for center-of-left movements to abandon any defense of immigration, adopting open anti-immigrant sentiment. And this isn’t a far-fetched idea. I have seen the Chilean left turning against my country’s immigrants in the face of majority right-wing Venezuelan immigration, just as the German left has with conservative Muslim immigration: disguising hatred as protection of social progress.

I expect the Democratic Party to embark on never-ending “moderation” devoid of substantial change. Down-ballot Democrats, who have outperformed Harris, are leading calls against transgender athletes and Biden’s border policy. Both the tent's moderate and left wings dismiss the evidence. Democratic firms report that swing voters’ main reasons for not choosing Harris were perceived inflation and a “focus on cultural issues, rather than the middle-class,” while their least important ones were her stance on Israel and her perception as “too conservative.” This contradicts left-wing claims of social and foreign policy moderation causing a defeat. With Jill Stein’s votes unable to surpass Harris’ difference to Trump in any state, and ranked-choice voting referenda facing defeats nationwide, American voters have rejected a progressive breakthrough of bipartisanship. 

However, this election also scored victories for pro-abortion and increased minimum wage referenda. America sided with civil rights and the working class but has been met with rhetoric blind to class issues. Democrats chose to deliver a billionaire the microphone of class struggle while invoking social justice alongside Liz Cheney. The path forward seems clear, but Democrats seem to clutch onto their definite world of identity by blaming Harris’ gender for her defeat, the Latino voters for their misogyny, or rural whites for their lack of college education. Democrats are seemingly not thinking of changing their outreach to minority voters, assuming deportation threats and racist jokes are enough to break a voter base of infinitely different backgrounds, many privileged and many oppressed. The Democrats’ outreach seems infuriating to many minorities, who perceive their support as taken for granted while television hosts imply that their deportations will be deserved. 

Despite the convulsion, we shall remember: decades can happen in weeks while nothing can happen in decades. Yet, Democrats seem to accelerate their spoilage this decade by leaving laborism for later.

ALEJANDRO MOSQUERA GARCIA is a sophomore studying mathematical economics and sociology from Barquisimeto, Venezuela. His email is amosquer@sas.upenn.edu.