Before I proceed, let me level with you: I would chew off my own foot before voting Republican, and I even voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries prior to voting for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the general elections. That said, I’m positive that there are many people reading this who flat-out won’t believe that I voted for Bernie once, let alone twice.
It's interesting to me is that most people tend to assume that I, like Kat Rosenfield, am much more centrist and even right-wing than I am, so I thought I’d break down why that’s the case.
There are obviously ideological differences between me and online progressives, the Bernie-wing of the Democratic party in the colloquial sense. I don’t care about reducing the defense budget, I’m not anti-Israel (although I’m opposed to Israeli settlements on the West Bank), I don’t support Medicare For All, I don’t believe crime is fake news, and I’m not any kind of socialist (although I’d argue that even Bernie himself isn’t a socialist but rather a Social Democrat).
More significantly, I think the major difference between most left-wingers and me is that I’m an optimistic institutionalist while they’re pessimistic idealists. I believe in the possibility of a better world, but I also firmly believe that tearing down institutions without a replacement in place will cause irreparable damage to vulnerable populations. Look at it like this: Was the Affordable Care Act perfect? No. Would repealing the ACA without replacing it as Republicans almost did in 2017 have been good because Medicare for All could then pass? Nope! All that would have happened is that 20 million+ people would have lost their health insurance and countless people would suffer and die from treatable illnesses.
Consider this: on the issue of immigration, any opinion that’s not “Border security is a racist dogwhistle” is grounds for instant online cancellation by everybody left-of-center, and that’s not my stance. I support changing our current immigration laws, and if it were up to me, Congress would immediately pass comprehensive immigration reform that would make it easier for people to seek asylum, massively up the quota for H1Bs for high-skilled workers and streamline the processing of green card and citizenship applications. But, I am against denying the existence of the laws currently in place because the laws are “wrong.” Ignoring laws on a case-by-case basis will lead to a disorderly society, and a disorderly society could quickly devolve into anarchy, which will result in collateral damage, and that means that the most vulnerable populations will be first on the chopping block.
(That aside from that fact that when Democrats try to circumvent laws without Congressional legislation, the American system of checks and balances often prevents them from doing so. This is why so many of President Biden’s executive orders on immigration were blocked by federal courts, and why his student debt cancellation is potentially at risk as well.)
The thing is, I’m extremely logical and pragmatic, probably to a fault, and it infuriates when people aren’t that way. I obviously have my share of unpopular opinions (Ex: wanting to ban cosmetic plastic surgery), but I’m not arguing that those stances are popular the way progressives allege Medicare For All is. Positive issue polling is irrelevant to me, like my question is, when push comes to shove, what does the electorate prioritize? Most Americans indicate in polls that they support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants, but do enough Americans vote for the party that wants to pass legislation that would grant a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants to enact that legislation? Nope!
Moreover, sorry to Ben Shapiro but I’ve been doing the “Facts don’t care about your feelings” bit for decades. I’m a huge advocate of free speech, I don’t believe in “thought crimes,” I believe that Americans are increasingly emotionally coddled of late, and I firmly believe that modern society has gotten insanely puritanical and moralizing in that young people seem fundamentally unable to differentiate between depiction and endorsement. And, for better or worse, the preceding statements all code as centrist or even Republican.
For a while, Democrats were the party of science and logic and rationality, but arguably since the 1990s and especially for the last decade, Democrats have become known as the party of hurt feelings. The reality is that when people are substantially more likely to base their party affiliation and vote on social issues than fiscal issues1, public perception will automatically code the party that prioritizes social liberalism as inherently sentimental because the impact of many social issues, apart from abortion, can’t often be quantified in an easily understood way.
My general point is that I don’t intentionally try to ruffle people’s feathers, and I’m not cruel, especially not 1-1, but I’m not publicly “soft,” and am extremely rhetorically sharp as well as completely averse to self-flagellation. I don’t see a point of caveating all my statements such that they can’t be misinterpreted like quite bluntly, it’s not my problem if other people lack elementary reading comprehension. In a way, this makes my personality much more stereotypically masculine than I aesthetically present because the reality is that due to upbringing and social conditioning, most liberal young women (of color) don’t adopt this persona and well, the old stereotype of Republicans = masculine and Democrats = feminine holds true.
The point to all this is that I genuinely think that it’s much easier for people to allege that I’m a crypto-Republican (or whatever else I’m called in Twitter group chats) than to accept any semblance of heterodoxy or deviation from the party line. I’m a young woman of color, so I’m expected to be a devout footsoldier to the Democratic/liberal/progressive cause at all costs, never asking any contentious questions or pushing back, and the moment I do, it understandably creates tension because I force people to adjust their standpoint theory induced priors.
To clarify though, it doesn’t hurt my feelings when I’m misrepresented or mischaracterized. I know perfectly well what my actual views are, and my friends and family do as well, but it annoys me that I feel obligated to caveat anodyne political statements with earnest reassurances that I’m actually a good liberal even if I disagree on XYZ, so I’m going to end this piece by politely but firmly declaring that I’m no longer going to bother going through the motions of reaffirming my moral ethos at every possible opportunity.
Since 2012, due to educational polarization and suburban realignment, Democrats began to win college-educated voters while losing non-college voters. Moreover, since 2012, Democrats have become markedly more liberal on many social issues (immigration, LGBT issues, race, etc.) and the unfortunate reality is that Obama-Trump voters, the plurality of whom were male and non-college educated, moved away from the Democratic party not because the party became too focused on the interests of the wealthy but because they disagreed with the Democratic Party on high-salience social issues, namely immigration, crime, and race/gender issues.
Obviously, Republicans are still the party of fiscal conservatism; they attempted to strip over 20 million people of their health care during the Trump administration when they tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act without replacing it and cut taxes for the wealthy. However, Democrats are in this sticky spot where they’re the party of the working class in terms of the economic policies they champion like the Child Tax Credit and heavily taxing corporations, but are also extremely reliant on high-income voters, the professional managerial class, to win federal majorities and the presidency since many of the people who most benefit from Democrats’ economic policies also refuse to vote Democrat due to the party’s social stances.
In other words, a supermajority of Americans supports raising taxes on the wealthy, but a supermajority of Americans doesn’t vote for the party that supports taxing the wealthy because that party is also the party of racial equity and preferred pronouns.
Great post here and good points about the ACA!
At some level, this story of passing a controversial and imperfect new social program that ultimately takes root, proves impossible to roll back, and gets made more generous over time - that's the story of EVERY social program in America. That very much includes Social Security, which was not only far less generous in its original incarnation, but specifically excluded domestic workers to appease segregationists in the Senate (a compromise more morally repugnant than anything it took to pass the ACA). Even if they are imperfect at the start, laying the foundation of new social programs is good and consequential and clearly worth doing.
I got involved in Obamacare enrollment outreach back in 2014 because it was clear to me even then that the ACA succeeding would be a gigantic step forward for our social insurance system. It frustrates me when some people hand-wave this away because it isn't their idea of perfect. And by the way - early last year the number of people covered by the ACA in some form (counting Medicaid expansion and Exchange enrollees) was already >35 million and is likely higher after this year's Open Enrollment.