DOUGLAS KENNEDY ON THE ELECTION - LA TRIBUNE DIMANCHE - CHRONIQUE 5

6 October 2024

ANGER ON THE LEFT

When it comes to outsiders trying to broad-sketch the United States, one of the ongoing stereotypes that is always invoked is: the angry white male. He is something of a cartoon: absolutely overweight, poorly educated, gun-owning, Jesus-loving, flag waving, and – of course – someone who worships at the altar of Donald Trump. 

And like all MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters, this burly beer-guzzling, evangelical, owner of military grade semi-automatic weapons hates so much in modern American life: most notably the secular elites of both coasts who dismiss his kind as nothing less than an illiterate, furious espouser of hate for anything that diminishes what he believes should be the superiority of the Caucasian Male in the United States – especially in a country where the demographic is beginning to marginalize him.

Indeed, much has already been written about how Trumpism from 2016 onwards has been fueled by rage… and how the Republican Party has cleverly used the Culture War divide to their political advantage. But the fact is: though the right in America is a far more potent political force – and has its very own hugely influential, commercially buoyant Pravda, Fox News, to disseminate its message across the country – the minority left in America have had impact on past elections… and could (in small, crucial ways) hurt Kamala Harris this year.

Let’s turn back the clock to the year 2000. The economy was booming. The Clinton Years – though shaded by sexual scandal – were largely  considered (back then) as a moment of fiscal and social stability in the United States (not to mention a time when, with the reunification of Europe and an entente cordial with the Russian Federation, there was an overarching sense of rare geopolitical steadiness). True there were the usual human horror shows – as seen in Bosnia and Rwanda – but when Clinton’s Vice President, Al Gore, became the Democratic candidate (against Texas’ s Republican governor, George W. Bush), the election was largely seen as his to lose. 

But lose he did – and though some blamed him keeping Clinton off the campaign trail (because of the taint of the President’s oral sex events with The White House intern, Monica Lewinsky), the fact remains: it was a third party candidate who stopped Gore from ascending to the Presidency. Ralph Nader – a well-known anti-corporate consumer rights activist and environmentalist – ran as alternative candidate to Gore and Bush. And many younger leftist voters either stubbornly decided to boycott the voting booth (registering their distaste for certain of Clinton’s more regressive social policies – like life imprisonment for anyone convicted of three felonies, and his refusal to insist on equal rights for gay Americans in the military), the fact remains: Gore lost the election by 543 votes thanks to the famous Florida recount. Had all those leftist/anti-establishment Nader voters done the smart strategic thing and backed Gore, he would have easily carried Florida and won the Electoral College… as Nader received 97,488 votes in Florida. Similarly, Nader winning 4% of the vote cost Gore the state of New Hampshire – which would have also given him the necessary Electoral College victory.

In short, an important number of disaffected Americans with a leftist political agenda ensured eight years of Bush/Cheney – and all that followed (most especially the insane invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 attacks… and all the geopolitical destabilization it wrought).

Similarly, Jill Stein – the Green Party candidate for President in 2016 – robbed Hillary Clinton of votes in several crucial states. According to the online magazine, Politico: “Had voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin cast their ballots for Clinton rather than the Green Party’s Stein, Clinton would be president”.

In a recent interview in Newsweek, Stein – who is running again as a third party Presidential candidate this year – essentially said that she could cost Harris the election.  As Newsweek noted:

“The Green Party leader has placed Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah front and center of her campaign—with potentially devastating effect for the Democrats. There's been a spike in support for her among the Muslim and Arab-American communities that polling shows could deny Harris victory in several swing states—and present a path to the White House for Donald Trump. The Greens are seeing particularly strong support in Michigan and Wisconsin—two key swing states that look likely to go to the wire”.

And then they quoted Stein herself:

"The Democrats cannot win without the support of the Muslim American community. And that community has left the station and is not coming back unless the Democrats decide that it's more important to them to win the election than it is to conduct the genocide”.

Stein has more than a touch of the vainglorious spoiler about her – and, without question, she was a great gift to Donald Trump in 2016. As such the Republican National Committee want her on the ballot this year in key swing states where the margins of victory are going to beyond razor-thin, and where a protest vote for Stein will undoubtedly be to the benefit of Trump.

This, in turn, raises a larger question: though Biden has moved the Democratic Party a little more leftwards (especially in his infrastructure policies and his avowed aim to improve the precarious position of the middle class, within which he grew up), the fact is that many young voters identify strongly with the strong progressivism of Bernie Sanders (the Independent Senator from Vermont) or the unabashed socialism of the thirty-two year old congresswoman known by her acronym AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). And this important voting bloc were clearly not enthused the prospect of a second Biden term… which is one of the many reasons why Biden was pressured to step aside for Harris. 

But the left – especially among university students and adults under thirty – still believe that the Democratic Party has been (from Clinton onwards) somewhat in the pocket of Wall Street and the tech billionaires (several of whom have recently switched their allegiance to Trump). To them the Democrats have not done enough to regulate the unbridled capitalism of our era. And in turn, the left have given a great gift to the American Right in wokeism – allowing them to sweepingly brand the other side as intellectual McCarthyites, ready to cancel out any viewpoint that does not conform to their heightened sensitivities regarding social justice and identity-based politics (vis-à-vis race, gender, sexual orientation, etc). The fact is: ‘wokeism’ is now used by Republicans as a sort of verbal shorthand for all forms of progressivism. Just consider the thoughts of the intensely conservative Texas governor Greg Abbott as a campaign rally in February of this year:

“We got a war on our hands against the Biden administration. We're fighting this battle against wokeism. We're fighting a battle against the leftist ideology that has tried to even take over the great state of Texas. We cannot take for granted the values that you hold so dear”.

It’s doubtful whether ‘wokeism’ will turn certain voters against Harris – especially as she is far more centrist and nuanced than those whom her Republican rival considers radical leftists. And another central truth of modern American politics: even those now branded as ‘socialists’ in the United States would be classified as ‘center left’ within a European context.

But it an absolute fact that, in an election so close (where a swing state’s precious electoral votes could turn on a few thousand ballots), the hope among Democrats is that enough young voters and those seduced by Jill Stein’s jeremiads will put aside their frustrations with the moderate nature of the Democratic party and not cast protest votes (or not vote at all). The Republican Party’s radicalism when it comes to restricting reproductive rights, freedom of sexual orientation and the fostering of an evangelical Christian agenda should be enough to sway this important voting bloc. But if there is one thing certain about the 2024 Presidential election: nothing is certain.