The prevailing narrative of the last election has been that “the Left went too far” with all of the “wokeness” and people were so frightened by that, they were forced into the loving arms of Donald Trump — a man who attempted to steal the previous election by force. A man who is dismantling the federal government, starting a whole ass trade war, and speaking with absolute glee about the horrible human rights conditions of a prison he is currently sending random asylum seekers with the wrong tattoos to, and to which he is “contemplating” sending American citizens. A man who has openly courted white supremacists, violent extremists, and lunatics who think people eat babies.

They had to do it, you see. Because people wrote/said “Latinx.” Because three trans girls somewhere wanted to play field hockey. Because people who were angry about police constantly killing unarmed Black people said “defund the police.” Because they heard about people putting their pronouns in the email signatures! What else were they to do?

Kamala Harris, herself, did not go too far. She was very pro-police, she barely mentioned trans people aside from saying that she would “follow the law” as far as their rights were concerned, and, aside from abortion rights, she mostly steered clear of literally anything or any topic that could have reasonably been described as contentious. But still, she lost because “the Left just went too far.”

. . . Why is it that no matter what they do, “the Right has gone too far” never seems to stick? I can tell you exactly why. It’s because they carry it off.

. . . One thing I’ve noticed is that, at this point, absolutely no one talks about “Defund the Police” more than moderate and centrist Democratic-leaning pundits who want to talk about what a bad idea it was, how it’s the worst phrase ever invented and how it cost Democrats elections. Half of the people freaking out about “woke” were also, ostensibly, Democrats. In fact, they were some of the first and the loudest.

. . . Take a moment and consider the way the term “socialist” hurts every Democrat but Bernie Sanders, who actually is a socialist. Sanders, like it or not, is pretty consistently rated as the most popular member of Congress. For the last three months, he’s had a net favorability rating of +7. Most other people are not doing so well right now!

. . . Now, I happen to agree with Bernie Sanders, ideologically, on most things. But that doesn’t mean that Democrats who believe different things can’t do some version of that themselves. They can keep their eyes on their own papers without worrying what people on the Left are doing (we have no damn legislative power anyway, but we’re also not going away any time soon) or what others might think, and just advocate for what they believe in, for what they think will actually be good for this country and the people in it.