A scathing review of last Tuesday’s presidential election was articulated by none other than the twice-tried, twice-denied presidential candidate from northern Vermont. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who, unsurprisingly, extended his tenured position in the U.S. Senate, took to the Boston Globe and tattered the already devastated, heartbroken and largely ineffective liberal and progressive left

Sanders writes:

“The results of the 2024 election have confirmed a reality that is too frequently denied by Democratic Party leaders and strategists: The American working class is angry — and for good reason.”

He proceeds to list what rationalizes this anger for many Americans, which, among other things, includes the noticeable and unjustifiable wealth inequality, job outsourcing, and the overall increased cost of living. Sanders rightly claims that “Donald Trump won this election because he tapped into that anger” concerning the economic status of millions of Americans–and the messaging obviously paid dividends. As noted by scholar Jason Stanley:

“It is precisely those material conditions for a healthy, stable democracy that the United States lacks today. If anything, America has come to be singularly defined by its massive wealth inequality, a phenomenon that cannot but undermine social cohesion and breed resentment. With 2,300 years of democratic political philosophy suggesting that democracy is not sustainable under such conditions, no one should be surprised by the outcome of the 2024 election.”

It is obvious to any honest observer that the Harris campaign failed miserably at messaging to a needy electorate. Instead of identifying with the values of the working class, they tried to blend corporate interest with public interest and committed to the strategy that Americans would fall for it. Tie this together with the fact that Kamala Harris’ campaign didn’t begin through democratic means but rather by a sort of panic-stricken, last-minute backroom coronation, and you offer the reactionary right plenty of ammunition for controversy.

If Tuesday’s election didn’t derail the Democratic establishment completely, it at least left it moribund. A political comeback for the left means pivoting and shifting course; back to a politics of freedom, a politics of genuine unity and progress and away from the meat grinder that is identity politics and cancel culture, which undeniably alienates a substantial portion of American voters.

A good start would be to quit attributing Trump’s victory to racism. Many subscribe to the idea that America just can’t seem to trust a Black woman as president. Nadira Goffe of Slate advanced this very notion, writing that “it wasn’t the fascism-loving felon whom voters couldn’t trust. It was the Black woman.”

The logic is beyond feeble. Most crucially, it shields Harris and the Democratic establishment from any accountability for the fact they did little to improve the lives of average Americans, which is the real reason why they lost the election. Harris failed at drawing a meaningful difference between herself and President Joe Biden, and after a turbulent four years, the American public was tired of facing the political and economic headwinds.

Moreover, Trump performed surprisingly well among minority voters. Newsday reports that “Donald Trump won more Black votes than any Republican candidate was able to do in nearly fifty years.” Additionally, writes the Associated Press, “particularly young Latino men, also were more open to Trump than in 2020. Roughly half of young Latino men voted for Harris, compared with about 6 in 10 who went for Biden.”

In response to these results I’ve often heard the racist remark suggesting that people shouldn’t vote for a Republican because they are a member of a particular identity group, which is racist in of itself: “How could Latinos ever possibly vote for someone like Trump?”,“don’t minorities realize they are voting against their best interest?” or, if you’re Joe Biden, African-Americans who don’t vote for you “ain’t black.” 

Minorities are not monolithic. They have different beliefs, backgrounds and insights that inform their voting choice: Democrats do not “deserve” a vote simply because they claim to be the party of social and economic justice. While I disagree with a Trump voter fundamentally, one should attempt to investigate why someone would vote in such fashion, not simply attribute the choice to minority delusion since they decided to vote outside the confines of their skin or ethnicity. In fact, many minority voters voted for reasons outside of identity. However, even when identity was a main concern, the Democrats failed to listen. In Dearborn, Michigan, for example, Arab-American voters staunchly opposed the Harris candidacy over the ongoing genocide in Gaza, so much so, that “Dearborn’s Arab Americans feel vindicated by Harris’ loss.” Who can blame them? Arab Americans plea to the Democrats “but those pleas go largely ignored.” 

These contradictions make it hard to endorse the Democratic platform. All the talk about social justice and equality while alienating minorities (socially and economically) is not exactly a winning formula. More than that, the “woke” left has unleashed tirades against men, particularly young men, and in the election, Democrats bore the brunt of it. Take the 2020 election: “Joe Biden won young men under 30 by 15 points” but in 2024, “Donald Trump won them by 13 points.”

Why? Warren Farrell writes about a young man from Mill Valley, California, who described his environment as completely anti-male. He feels that positive forms of masculinity do not exist and that he intrinsically embraces toxic masculinity by virtue of him being a male. But, as the young male puts it bluntly, “I can’t help being who I am.”

The irony of this story is that such an effect is what the left, in principle, claims to oppose. We should without a doubt question the traditional norms of our society and identify and work against injustice as we see it. However, the issue with the modern common-enemy identity politics of the left is that it isolates itself by residing in an echo chamber of “safety” and emotional comfort, making learning and dialogue impossible. As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write in their book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” “common-enemy identity politics, when combined with microaggression theory, produces a call-out culture in which almost anything one says or does could result in public shaming.”

This, to no surprise, produces an equally potent and dangerous counter-reaction on the right, which is how the U.S. once again fell into the arms of a swivel-eyed lunatic in Donald Trump. It is the pressure to conform to the quasi-religious woke left and the fear of backlash and public shaming for having an opinion that frightens people ever rightward toward the precipice. Public shaming orthodoxy is akin to the charge of thought-crime and an ideology that enables the existence of such a “crime” is an ideology that can only sustain itself on conditions that are inherently totalitarian. 

Is Trump a fanatical, raving, obnoxious, divisive, right-wing billionaire populist demagogue? Without question. However, what remains obvious (and if it hasn’t before it definitely should now) is that people do not care about sensitivity and political correctness. In the real world, people are hurting. Results are what they care about. And though I find the view naive, swaths of the American voting base believe that’s just what Trump produces. In their view, at least the loudmouth bigot gets something done. He wears his fallibility around his neck like a weighty medallion because he knows it will lead him to victory when his unctuous opposition breathes self-defeating contradictions. 

This article is by no means an endorsement of Donald Trump. In truth, I am very suspicious of his intentions and I believe he contributes greatly to our fractured politics. This article is intended to be an explanation of our current situation and, more crucially, a call out to those left of center. Liberals and progressives were humiliated this election and, from an honest ally, defanging the MAGA movement necessitates a political rewiring of the core values of the modern left. That requires, however, a return to rationality (away from identity politics), a return to honest results for the people of our nation and a commitment to our rights for all, not just when it’s convenient.

If Trump, of all people, can be the architect of what some deem “the greatest political comeback in modern U.S. history”, then I’m confident those on the left can too.