WHY Everyone Hates the Educated Left
Part two of my "Democrats...what are we doing here?" series
If you’re a Democrat, and you came away from Tuesday thinking “no self-reflection is needed!” then — as they say where I’m from — God love ya. Personally, I’m pro-self-reflection pretty much across the board, because at every point in my life, thinking about myself from five years ago causes me to be mortified to the point of paralysis. The further back I think, the more I want to jump into a volcano. This process of constant reflection and — one hopes — self-improvement is the only, remote shot I have at being something less than a total douche-rocket before I die.
Some Democrats continue to deny that anything weird is happening on the left. The line from some liberals after Tuesday’s ass-kicking was “We lost because Youngkin and conservative activists stoked racial animus.” This strikes me as denial in its purest form, a doubling-down on the “how do we get these racist fuckwits to like us?” attitude that ignores the possibility that our actions might be part of the problem. It’s belied by the fact that Youngkin did better with Black voters than Trump, who, himself, outperformed expectations. I don’t have a fine-grained analysis of what happened in Virginia; ultimately, Virginia is weather, and I want to talk about climate. And the climate is one in which many on the left refuse to admit that we’re playing footsy with a weird, elite ideology that most Americans hate.