At least since the publication of John Rawls’ monumental “A Theory of Justice” in 1971, liberals have divorced justice from desert, since we don’t deserve our natural endowments, whether that be height, agility, or talent at math. Donald Trump quickly grasped that this view of egalitarianism rubs most US voters the wrong way.
LONDON – Who “lost” the 2024 United States presidential election? How could Donald Trump receive 77 million votes and easily capture a majority of the Electoral College? Those questions will haunt the Democratic Party – and liberals everywhere – for a long time.
Some centrists in the Democratic party argue that it was all about “wokeness.” By focusing on trans rights, preferred pronouns, and unpopular ideas like “defund the police,” left-wing Democrats alienated the white working class that had once voted reliably Democratic. One particularly effective Republican ad, repeated incessantly across traditional and social media, proclaimed “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.” According to the centrist argument, Democrats waged a culture war – and got beaten.
Not so fast, say Democratic progressives. The election was not about a culture war but, instead, about a class war. Working Americans resented the high cost of groceries and health care and the loss of jobs to China. Had Democrats embraced “economic populism,” they would have beaten Trump.
But there is a problem with this counterargument. President Joe Biden kept Trump’s China tariffs in place, enacted a huge fiscal stimulus package, provided generous subsidies to firms making industrial goods in America, and even joined blue-collar workers on the picket line. Yet Trump carried all the Rust Belt states and increased his share of the Black and Latino vote.
What happened? A pro-union Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat in the same election, has an answer. The party, he claims, followed the right policies, but displayed the wrong attitude: Democrats have had a “condescending” approach to blue-collar workers, and see them as “sort of a charity case.” Workers take pride in the work they do, and Democrats – he argues – should have done more to recognize their contribution.
So, both sides reluctantly agree on one thing: it is all about values and respect. For centrists, the woke agenda alienated workers who hold traditional beliefs. For progressives like Brown, arrogant technocrats brandishing Ivy League credentials alienated Americans without a college degree by looking down on them.
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None other than Trump agrees with Brown. The heroes of his second inaugural speech were the “farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steelworkers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers” who “laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways” and, while they were at it, “won two world wars.”
In the same speech, Trump vowed to end the policy of “trying to socially engineer race and gender,” promising instead “a society that is color-blind and merit-based.” He also promised to “stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.” You might not like his policies, but there is no denying that Trump frames politics in moral terms.
Back in the early 1990s, NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt designed an experiment in which subjects read accounts of harmless taboo violations, like eating your dead pet or using an old flag to clean the bathroom. In the stories, nobody was hurt or suffered, and the actions took place in private, so no one knew what happened. Still, people from different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds unanimously found the behavior reprehensible and immoral. Few subjects could explain why it was wrong, but it just had to be. In fact, many subjects invented instances of harm to justify their judgment. Haidt concluded that we are wired to understand the world – including politics – in moral terms.
Liberals were slow to absorb this lesson. After all, moral neutrality has long been a mainstay of certain brands of liberalism: you have your definition of a good life, and I have mine, but I could not possibly tell you which is better. Liberals thought that such a neutral stance demonstrated respect for voters.
But morally wired voters do not see it that way. As political theorist William Galston recognized long ago, “the public perceives the liberal embrace of neutrality as part of the problem, not the solution; as a corrosive assault on, not a re-legitimation of, ordinary morality.”
Other progressives made the opposite mistake: they became preachy. The clothes you wear (not made with recycled materials?), the food you eat (not sourced locally?), and the car you drive (tsk, tsk, a gas-guzzler!) became subjects for moral condemnation. No wonder many middle-class citizens felt like they were confronting a new inquisition overseen by coastal elites in Boston, New York, and San Francisco.
Effective liberal politics must be moral but not preachy. It is a delicate – but far from impossible – balancing act. Voters, particularly in the United States, perceive the presidency as a bully pulpit. They expect leaders to articulate the values people share and explain how those values will make the country a better place.
Some fundamental liberal values, like equal respect and equal dignity, are widely shared. But they must be promoted, not imposed. And they must be embodied in policies that fit, not clash, with the average voter’s moral intuitions. Trump is politically smart when he promises rules that are color-blind and merit-based. That has wide purchase. Gender-neutral bathrooms, much less so.
At least since the publication of John Rawls’ monumental A Theory of Justice in 1971, liberals have divorced justice from desert. Rawls argued that because natural endowments are accidents of fate (you don’t deserve to be tall and agile), they cannot serve as the basis for distributing rewards.
But try telling basketball fans that their favorite players, who happen to be very tall and agile, do not deserve more playing time and a higher salary. Or try telling the parents next door, whose daughter happens to be naturally very good at math, that she does not deserve admission to a top university. That bit of Rawlsian egalitarianism rubs people the wrong way.
Many progressives are obsessed with universal basic income, which is a paycheck you get from the government at the end of the month whether or not you got out of bed most mornings. I am willing to bet voters would much rather have the government guarantee effective equal opportunity, so that good jobs and higher incomes go to highly productive people who work the hardest.
To give populists like Trump a run for their money, liberals need to speak in moral terms and connect with most voters’ moral intuitions. If they don’t, they will soon be discussing who lost the 2028 election.
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LONDON – Who “lost” the 2024 United States presidential election? How could Donald Trump receive 77 million votes and easily capture a majority of the Electoral College? Those questions will haunt the Democratic Party – and liberals everywhere – for a long time.
Some centrists in the Democratic party argue that it was all about “wokeness.” By focusing on trans rights, preferred pronouns, and unpopular ideas like “defund the police,” left-wing Democrats alienated the white working class that had once voted reliably Democratic. One particularly effective Republican ad, repeated incessantly across traditional and social media, proclaimed “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.” According to the centrist argument, Democrats waged a culture war – and got beaten.
Not so fast, say Democratic progressives. The election was not about a culture war but, instead, about a class war. Working Americans resented the high cost of groceries and health care and the loss of jobs to China. Had Democrats embraced “economic populism,” they would have beaten Trump.
But there is a problem with this counterargument. President Joe Biden kept Trump’s China tariffs in place, enacted a huge fiscal stimulus package, provided generous subsidies to firms making industrial goods in America, and even joined blue-collar workers on the picket line. Yet Trump carried all the Rust Belt states and increased his share of the Black and Latino vote.
What happened? A pro-union Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat in the same election, has an answer. The party, he claims, followed the right policies, but displayed the wrong attitude: Democrats have had a “condescending” approach to blue-collar workers, and see them as “sort of a charity case.” Workers take pride in the work they do, and Democrats – he argues – should have done more to recognize their contribution.
So, both sides reluctantly agree on one thing: it is all about values and respect. For centrists, the woke agenda alienated workers who hold traditional beliefs. For progressives like Brown, arrogant technocrats brandishing Ivy League credentials alienated Americans without a college degree by looking down on them.
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None other than Trump agrees with Brown. The heroes of his second inaugural speech were the “farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steelworkers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers” who “laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways” and, while they were at it, “won two world wars.”
In the same speech, Trump vowed to end the policy of “trying to socially engineer race and gender,” promising instead “a society that is color-blind and merit-based.” He also promised to “stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.” You might not like his policies, but there is no denying that Trump frames politics in moral terms.
Back in the early 1990s, NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt designed an experiment in which subjects read accounts of harmless taboo violations, like eating your dead pet or using an old flag to clean the bathroom. In the stories, nobody was hurt or suffered, and the actions took place in private, so no one knew what happened. Still, people from different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds unanimously found the behavior reprehensible and immoral. Few subjects could explain why it was wrong, but it just had to be. In fact, many subjects invented instances of harm to justify their judgment. Haidt concluded that we are wired to understand the world – including politics – in moral terms.
Liberals were slow to absorb this lesson. After all, moral neutrality has long been a mainstay of certain brands of liberalism: you have your definition of a good life, and I have mine, but I could not possibly tell you which is better. Liberals thought that such a neutral stance demonstrated respect for voters.
But morally wired voters do not see it that way. As political theorist William Galston recognized long ago, “the public perceives the liberal embrace of neutrality as part of the problem, not the solution; as a corrosive assault on, not a re-legitimation of, ordinary morality.”
Other progressives made the opposite mistake: they became preachy. The clothes you wear (not made with recycled materials?), the food you eat (not sourced locally?), and the car you drive (tsk, tsk, a gas-guzzler!) became subjects for moral condemnation. No wonder many middle-class citizens felt like they were confronting a new inquisition overseen by coastal elites in Boston, New York, and San Francisco.
Effective liberal politics must be moral but not preachy. It is a delicate – but far from impossible – balancing act. Voters, particularly in the United States, perceive the presidency as a bully pulpit. They expect leaders to articulate the values people share and explain how those values will make the country a better place.
Some fundamental liberal values, like equal respect and equal dignity, are widely shared. But they must be promoted, not imposed. And they must be embodied in policies that fit, not clash, with the average voter’s moral intuitions. Trump is politically smart when he promises rules that are color-blind and merit-based. That has wide purchase. Gender-neutral bathrooms, much less so.
At least since the publication of John Rawls’ monumental A Theory of Justice in 1971, liberals have divorced justice from desert. Rawls argued that because natural endowments are accidents of fate (you don’t deserve to be tall and agile), they cannot serve as the basis for distributing rewards.
But try telling basketball fans that their favorite players, who happen to be very tall and agile, do not deserve more playing time and a higher salary. Or try telling the parents next door, whose daughter happens to be naturally very good at math, that she does not deserve admission to a top university. That bit of Rawlsian egalitarianism rubs people the wrong way.
Many progressives are obsessed with universal basic income, which is a paycheck you get from the government at the end of the month whether or not you got out of bed most mornings. I am willing to bet voters would much rather have the government guarantee effective equal opportunity, so that good jobs and higher incomes go to highly productive people who work the hardest.
To give populists like Trump a run for their money, liberals need to speak in moral terms and connect with most voters’ moral intuitions. If they don’t, they will soon be discussing who lost the 2028 election.