The Rise of MAGA Democrats

If Liberalism is Over and Trumpism Ascendant, How Should Liberals Vote?

I know I’m not alone in wondering where I fit in politically these days. People like me, whenever it is they had their political awakening that the Democrats offer a false promise with truly terrible economic, cultural and infrastructural outcomes, and who are objectively unpopular on a national level, now read sources like The Free Press and this humble Thacher Report essay. Finally, we feel seen by journalists. Same for the many podcasters who present commonsense, alternative viewpoints we can’t find in legacy media wed to 20th century conventions and entrenched sectarianism.

We shy from protests with young healthy people wearing masks outdoors, some in keffiyehs, many who insist that crossdressing men deserve legally-protected access to private women’s spaces, no matter the risk to women or recent UK jurisprudence. We worry about our own children facing potential mutilation or social bullying in a progressive future that indoctrinates them to harm themselves as a remedy for invented mental health pathologies — pathologies and corresponding cures few other countries condone, unless you’re talking about female genital mutilation in majority Muslim lands that impacts 230 million girls according to the WHO.

Funny how that comparison never comes up on the left. Those people are ghastly, but when Americans mutilate women, it’s for social justice. Sounds fundamentalist to me, and perhaps that’s my ultimate point: 21st Century Liberalism has degraded from Boomer generation civil rights justice to something more like a religion or fetishization, less about rational and unifying policy outcomes. The unpopularity of 21st Century Liberalism proves its more narrow focus for true believers, rather than competing on an intellectual playing field that tries to win popular support.

Trump has won more votes each time he’s run for president, and he has long enough coattails to secure Republican congressional victories. This is objectively true. Meaning, if a national election is the closest thing we have as Americans to scoring a game on a playing field, we know who’s winning.

---

I voted for Harris. I’ve always voted for someone like Harris. I’ve never had a choice in MA, CA or NY to vote for someone unlike Harris. Last November I hosted a pizza party to watch the returns with new friends at my Brooklyn home. I gnashed my teeth at Harris’ epic loss in every swing state. My guests left with dejected murmurs while I slowly cleaned, wondering why I had been hopeful for her win. What happened to all the “joy” the media promised me was in national abundance? Why did every ultra high net worth celebrity and most pollsters get it wrong?

Months later, I now find myself quietly supporting the Trump administration as it pushes against DEI policies that have been proven to fail, inflate tuition, stifle intellectual inquiry and may actually harm minorities. I’m seeing huge upside in MAGA/MAHA — yet Trump himself remains a warning of our vulnerability to populist charisma surpassing the rule of law. It’s a tough spot to be in for Americans like us, especially because there is no alternative. While RFKjr pushes the junk food industry to remove toxic artificial colors from kids’ food, and Trump pushes against trans policies that harm women and girls, the left only seems to complain, or double-down on progressive rallies — which I’ve tried to explain in past essays rely on antisemitism as a core belief. Only some people with some beliefs can attend these rallies. They’re popular in the moment, absolutely, but it’s hard to argue that they’re inclusive of most Americans or even interested in inclusion.

They say they’re fighting against oligarchy. Never mind that Bernie Sanders is worth $3 million — a tidy sum for rural Vermont with an average net worth of $800,000. Or imagine AOC’s potential future earnings if she becomes a senator — it’s reasonable to assume she has the ambition to make the Obama’s private vacation estates in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii look like sad cabins in the woods.

Yes, there are a handful of wealthy celebrity journalists like Ezra Klein and Thomas Friedman urging a neoliberal, less regulated capitalism, but I’m not sure I understand how Democrats are supposed to become Mitt Romney and win elections.

There is no middle. There is no left. There is only Trump. You would think that would motivate a re-examination of Democratic values, but it hasn’t.

Speaking of a Trump upside, I’m particularly excited about his administration’s fight against antisemitism and related extremist ideologies in our colleges and universities that, funnily enough, rely on Federal support as they jack up tuitions, expand non-faculty bureaucracies and preach illiberal propaganda to young students. Whom later graduate and fill elite newsrooms and Hollywood studios as partisan activists instead of unaligned reporters and cultural opportunists.

What frustrates me about this dynamic — my support of Trump and my fruitless search for alternatives — is that his actions against racism, bigotry, child abuse, illiberal pedagogy and the literal pollution of our food sources should be popular policies of any administration of any party.

Trump is the one who’s doing it while Democratic supporters tell me, in this last example, that there’s either no antisemitism in America (despite every hate crime statistic to the contrary) or that if there is antisemitism, it’s a figleaf the administration uses to advance ulterior motives no one can explain. Same with the obsessive trans victimhood or the bizarre focus on niche skin-color identity when really, as a massive society, Americans should focus on our common humanity, not our particular differences. But the left says no, that’s impossible. It’s racism to not be racial. You see where this thinking gets you. It’s a rabbit hole of nonsense that doesn’t expand the middle class, build transportation hubs and advanced factories, or keep you safe.

I was at a dinner party the other night when someone said Jews should be careful to celebrate Trump’s demand for security of Jewish students on campuses by withholding federal funds—because there will be a backlash.

She didn’t say where that backlash would come from, but the only option is… from liberals. It was as shocking as it common among the left, who also now routinely cheapen the unique historicity of the Holocaust by comparing Trump to Hitler—which is as hysterical as it is offensive.

My friend at the dinner is very smart with sound morals who doesn’t hate anyone, but to me, her logic sounds like blaming the victim. Is it the fault of Jewish students for wanting security from attack and bullying?

Second, it’s an acknowledgement of leftwing bigotry, which the left rarely acknowledges. (Cf countless editorial in the New York Times by college presidents and far left columnists who say there’s no bigotry on campus, or if there is is, it’s been solved. Remind me why Yale just had a anti-Israel mob this week resulting in arrests?)

We’re told by the mainstream press and by tut-tutting wealthy liberal elites that Trump is ushering in a new age of fascism, meanwhile, they don’t allow you to disagree with them, they refuse to acknowledge widespread bigotry and physical attack (like connecting the dots from Anti-Israel mobs at Yale to Josh Shapiro’s first night of Passover) and they preside over states that pull money from our pockets while offering poor services and increased costs of living and rising rates of homelessness — but none of that intolerance, impoverishment and physical attack is fascistic, it’s the other guys who are to blame. Hmmmm.

You now no longer need to wonder why I’m politically homeless. When my option is obey or else, I'll take the or else.

Let’s keep going with why quiet support for the current administration is reasonable. Yes, there are egregious breaches of the rule of law that impacts a handful of exiled asylum seekers, these actions will become deal breakers to me if our courts are ignored, but the constitutional crisis we’re told is coming is about as extant as the widespread famine in Gaza that's always around the corner. It ain’t happening. (Polio vaccinations are.)

What makes this political moment harder is that we're not just talking about highly sectarian voters who won't recognize the reality of blue state decline and lack of commonly shared values. You can't trust most legacy media either. The news is not a place you can go to understand the changes, opportunities and pitfalls of our time. You can learn about mostly wealthy journalists’ fears and prejudices, but not what's happening.

So where does this leave us. Are we MAGA Democrats? Do we have to remain quiet within the Democratic party because ostracism is their go-to mechanism of enforcement? I can’t be alone in not being able to talk about Trump objectively with many liberal friends. Just mentioning upside or evenhanded analysis of his executive orders crosses the line from partisan groupthink into open-minded inquiry; but that’s not allowed. Why? See my rantings above about how liberal intellectualism has morphed in the past decades into illiberal ideology. Sadly, these are the same people who control the vast majority of K-12, college and post graduate education.

Why am I even a Democrat at all considering the policy and ideological failures of the left to adapt to the 21st Century? In part, we all have our heritages and this is mine — my grandparents were successful capitalists thankfully, but they also voted for labor rights in the New Deal era for a reason, they knew it was the better policy than Hoovervilles and isolationism, never mind Republican flirtations with Nazism.

They were right, the middle class expanded dramatically after WWII until collapsing in the 1980s with Reagan — and his eager followers, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama, none of whom invested in working class expansion. Instead they catered to a late 20th century information technology elite who now rule with more and more concentrated power.

If my grandparents were alive now, I’d like to think they’d reassess a political party and adjacent cultural hegemons by wondering why their Bronx infrastructure falls apart as their taxes, fees and fines increase, and why prioritizing newly invented niche identity groups takes precedence over their physical safety and financial opportunity? As a New Yorker, Californian, Bay Stater, Vermonter, et al, none of us have the option to caucus with Republicans if we want our votes to count.

We’re stuck in blue states. Our color is blue for now, and Republican vulnerabilities—ignoring the rule of law, fighting for fossil fuels and rarely building anything, anywhere—don’t yet present compelling options.

I wonder if Democrats can adjust to the 21st Century challenges and see what’s beneficial in MAGA/MAHA while stripping out the illegal, corrupt, incompetent craziness. For now, their strategy is to advocate for American and global decline so they present a least worst option next November.

Remind me, why is rooting for failure an agenda worth supporting?