Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
As with Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, his somewhat less surprising – though still jarring – win in 2024 has set off a flurry of failed explanations for how and why he pulled it off.
Let’s try to cut through the fog and get at why this happened (again).
I’m starting another round of election predictions with a bit of dread. Not because the election is a particularly uncertain one (though it is). And not because this election presents the possibility of another Trump administration (though it does).
Rather, my sense of dread comes from the fact that the left hardly has any skin in the game.
Democrats have long catered to moderate voters. But the Kamala Harris campaign really cranked this trend into overdrive. She campaigns to the right on issues like immigration. And she has wrapped her campaign around winning over so-called ‘Never Trump’ Republicans.
In other words, Harris campaigns with roughly the politics of a Bob Dole or Mitt Romney. Maybe she won’t govern that way if she wins – though she might. But the mere fact that she thinks she can get away with this shows the relative powerlessness of the political left in the U.S.
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