Is America moving rightward?

Looking at my own experience

Election day is fast approaching. Two weeks from Tuesday our moment of truth will finally arrive. Since I wrote about the state of the presidential race last week, nothing has changed. It still is boring, close and stable and almost certainly will remain that way until the end.   

Before we get to the topic of this piece, I want to make some suggestions about how you, dear reader, can help out should you be so inclined. Needless to say, as a committed Democrat, I’m only going to be making suggestions for how to help Democrats. If anyone reading this is a Republican, thank you, I appreciate your being a subscriber and I mean that 100%. It’s good to hear from those on the other side, but when election season rolls around, my partisan loyalties are no secret.

The best thing you can do is give money. Campaigns need money mostly to run ads. Ground games get a lot of hype, but I think the whole concept is highly overrated. I’m not saying it’s useless, but it’s nowhere near as important as running ads. If you want to volunteer for a campaign, by all means have at it, but don’t get carried away.

As far as who you should donate to, very few federal races are in need of it. The Harris campaign has more money than they know what to do with. In congressional races, Democratic candidates are swimming in cash, whether they’re challengers, incumbents or running for open seats. They also have plenty of support from outside groups. If Democrats do poorly next month it won’t be because they had no money.

There is, however, one Senate candidate I do recommend donating to. His name is Dan Osborn and he is running as an independent in Nebraska. He’s an underdog for sure, but he’s running a good campaign and has spooked Republicans into spending money there, which should not be happening. His odds of winning may be low, but it wouldn’t be the most shocking thing to ever happen and he’s worth supporting. You can donate here.

With respect to gubernatorial races, what was supposed to be the most competitive race is looking like a wipeout. In North Carolina, Josh Stein, the Democrat, is almost certainly going to win handily. His opponent has completely imploded, has no campaign staff and no support from outside groups. There is no need to donate anymore.

I would recommend donating to Jennifer McCormick. She’s the Democratic candidate for governor in Indiana. Like Osborn, she’s unlikely to win, but Republicans and Democrats are spending money there when they shouldn’t be. You can donate here.

The most important races that get very little money and attention are state legislative races. As we’re seeing now with abortion, state legislatures are a big deal. Democrats neglected state legislatures for years, but are finally catching up. The best groups to donate to are Forward Majority, The States Project and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

____________________________________________________________________________

This piece argues that regardless of who wins next month, the country is going to move rightward. It cites immigration, criminal justice and transgender issues as the main areas where that will happen. It also cites Harris’ overall agenda and notes that it’s much less ambitious compared to what Biden campaigned on in 2020.

It’s not just on substance, but on rhetoric where things have shifted rightwards. For example, talk of “systemic racism” is long gone. Democrats everywhere are eager to tout their law and order credentials and endorsements from law enforcement officials. On energy, there is much less talk about the “climate crisis” and much more talk about an “all of the above” approach.

All of those points are valid and there are bigger forces that will prevent a left-wing economic agenda from being enacted even if everything goes perfectly for Democrats next month. Higher interest rates and concern about inflation will put a hard limit on big spending initiatives of any sort. Raising taxes on high earners and corporations can generate plenty of revenue, but not nearly enough to cover the most ambitious proposals.

Although the macroeconomic environment limits what Democrats can do, it also limits what Republicans can do. Most of the so-called Trump tax cuts are set to expire next year and that will be the biggest legislative fight no matter who wins. If Republicans win Congress and the White House, they will be between a rock and a hard place. If they extend all of the tax cuts with no offsets, we will have higher inflation and/or higher interest rates, which will be very unpopular. If they try to offset extending them with cuts to spending programs, that will be very unpopular. If they try to offset extending them with tariffs, that will raise prices and will be very unpopular.

The best answer I can give to the question of where the country is moving ideologically is “it depends.” On immigration, things have definitely shifted rightwards since 2021, but that’s not necessarily going to be true for long. If Trump wins and attempts to deport millions of people, it will be very unpopular and public opinion will move leftward because of it just as it moved leftward during his first term.

The key to understanding how public opinion works is a concept known as thermostatic public opinion. What it means is public opinion on the national level moves in the opposite direction of where policy goes. People love to say they want “change” in the abstract, but in practice status quo bias is very strong. The Affordable Care Act, for example, inspired passionate opposition when it was being debated and after it passed. Once it took effect it became the status quo and the attempt to repeal it was toxic and failed.

The simplest description of thermostatic public opinion is when there is a Democratic president public opinion moves rightward and when there is a Republican president it moves leftward. Under Trump, the ACA went from being unpopular to popular. Under Biden, public opinion went from being pro-immigration to supporting all kinds of restrictive measures.

While public opinion generally moves against the party in the White House, that’s not always the case. The best current example of that is abortion. Public opinion on it was stuck in neutral for almost 50 years. Since Dobbs, it has moved decidedly leftward and the pro-choice cause has had one win after another. Odds are that will happen again next month.

If Harris wins, that’s not going to change. Abortion bans are unpopular no matter who is in charge. People have seen their effects and most don’t like it. If Trump wins and attempts any kind of federal abortion ban, there will be a major backlash and public opinion will likely move even more towards the pro-choice position.

It’s possible public opinion will move rightwards if Harris wins, but it’s not guaranteed. It’s more likely than not that Republicans will win the Senate next month. If Harris is president and Republicans have the Senate, anything she signs will have bipartisan support because it will have to. An effective way to generate a backlash in the court of public opinion is to pass or attempt to pass a controversial measure on a party-line vote. Without full control of Congress, Harris won’t be able to do that, which would be better electorally for Democrats for the 2026 elections and beyond.

Trump, if he wins, is almost certainly going to have a Republican Senate. The House is less clear, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if Republicans kept it. In that case, Republicans would have the opportunity to do things like extend all the tax cuts I just discussed. If inflation and/or interest rates rise or popular programs get cut, there will be a backlash and public opinion will move leftwards. 

As someone who is on the center-left, I actually welcome the rightward shift in some ways. Coming from the center/center-left wing of the Democratic Party, I’m glad to see pushback against the leftist wing. I’m very encouraged by Harris’ embrace of business and courting business leaders. It’s good to see the dumb left-wing fads that were prevalent during the Trump years face pushback.

Gone are the days when defund the police and “Abolish ICE” were slogans. I haven’t heard words like latinx and BIPOC used in quite a while. Nobody is proposing abolishing private health insurance anymore and very few people are calling for banning fracking or open borders.

I’m glad to see more Democratic candidates and elected officials recognize that advocacy groups don’t speak for the people they claim to. It’s good to hear Harris talking about support for an “all of the above” energy approach and about the record oil and gas production that has happened since 2021. It’s good to hear talk about patriotism and the things that make this country great. Technically, all of those are moves rightward, but that’s just in comparison to the crazy shit that gained a footing during the Trump years.

That’s something to keep in mind when you hear anyone talking about things moving leftward or rightward. Moving is they key word. Shifts in public opinion and public policy are relative. Just because things are moving leftward or rightward doesn’t mean things are left-wing or right-wing. For example, if someone goes from being far-left to left, they have moved rightward, but are not right-wing by any stretch of the imagination.

I welcome the Democrats’ relative shift to the right, especially compared to the 2019-20 primary. Some people in Democratic Party elite circles really lost their minds during the Trump years and that manifested itself in their moving way out into left-field. Their moving rightward compared to that is just them becoming sane again. Harris is a great example of that. She’s running a very center/center-left campaign, which is great compared to the leftist campaign she ran in 2019, but by no means is she a right-winger.

My ideological journey

I’m center-left today, but I used to be on the left. To be clear, when I use the phrases “the left,” “the left-wing,” “those on the left” and “the leftist wing,” I’m referring to the same group. I first came of political age in high school during the Bush years. The things I remember most from that time are 9/11, the war in Iraq and the fight over gay marriage. I was against the war in Iraq from the start and was in favor of gay marriage. Both of those were initially very unpopular stances. Over time, that has changed, but it was the left-wing of the Democratic Party that was right on both of them from the start.

During my political formative years, basically the entire 2000s, the left was right about most major issues. When the economy fell off a cliff in 2008, it was mostly those on the left who criticized stimulus efforts for being inadequate and they were right. After the stimulus package was passed in 2009, almost immediately the focus in DC shifted to deficit reduction. It was those on the left who rightfully opposed that and pointed out that unemployment remained high and interest rates were low. The focus needed to be on the economy and more stimulus measures were needed.

I would say the left was right about most of the big issues right up until 2010 or so. I remember when the ACA was being debated, the left wanted a public option. I did, too, but I wanted the bill to pass even if it didn’t have it. The left-wing Democratic members of Congress voted for the ACA despite their reservations and it passed, but the reaction from parts of the left-wing world was not one of celebration. It was bemoaning the lack of a public option. It was really disappointing to hear.

I don’t know exactly when I switched from left to center-left, but it was probably sometime during Obama’s first term. I only say that retrospectively because it wasn’t something I thought about very much at the time. I still believed then that the left was good and that they had been right to push for a public option as part of the ACA. At worst, I thought some on the left were annoying and others were naïve about how hard it is to get things through Congress. I also liked the left-wing advocacy world and thought very well of groups like the ACLU.

It was during Obama’s second term when the left started going down a bad path. After comprehensive immigration reform died in the House in 2013, immigration activists convinced Democratic candidates and elected officials that compromising with Republicans was pointless. The solution was to stop supporting enforcement measures and to take executive action to make border crossings easier. In their telling, Republicans were committing electoral suicide because they were going to get killed with Hispanic voters.

It was also during Obama’s second term where wokeness began to pop up. There is no single event that started it, but between Ferguson and some other incidents involving police, white liberals began to move way leftward on race beginning in 2014. White liberals have since moved so far leftward that their views on race are now to the left of non-whites.

When Trump was nominated, I thought he would easily lose. Surely his position on immigration alone would sink him. There was no way someone with his temperament would get elected president. Like everyone else, I was wrong.

The big debate after 2016 was what the response should be to Trump winning. I thought the right answer was straightforward. Democrats didn’t have a problem with their message, but had a huge problem with their messenger. Of all the reasons Clinton lost, her policy positions didn’t make the top trillion. The solution was to nominate someone with a similar platform, but who was more credible and able to take advantage of Trump’s weaknesses. The left had a very different take.

Misinterpreting what happened in 2016 is not unique to the left, but that crowd has gotten it very wrong. In their story, Trump’s win was the public saying they wanted a revolution. The existing economic order needed to be fundamentally rethought. Free trade and traditional economics needed to go and protectionism was the way forward. The market-oriented economy needed to be supplemented if not replaced by heavy government intervention.

In the left’s eyes, Trump was a far-right ideologue. He pushed for far-right ideas that the public didn’t like. Because people didn’t like his far-right ideas, that meant they wanted far-left ideas. The solution was to go way out into left-field on everything from culture to economics. How to do better with non-white groups? Oppose all immigration enforcement and talk about race non-stop. How to do better with working-class whites? Abolish private health insurance, ban billionaires and tout the virtues of socialism.

The Trump years were when the left completely lost it and I went from not considering myself one of them to strongly disliking them. I mostly blame social media for it, especially Twitter. Everyone hears about everything and has an instant reaction to any event that happens no matter how trivial. It allows people to live in the smallest echo chambers and forget that there is a big outside world where their crazy ideas don’t fly.

It was on Twitter where wokeness thrived. Just about every left-wing advocacy group fell under its spell. Almost overnight, that entire world became completely alien to me and I no longer recognized it and still don’t. Suddenly, things like free speech and free inquiry became bad and needed to be stamped out.

On policy, the ideas pushed for by the left during the Trump years were almost all terrible. Abolishing private health insurance, banning fracking and throwing open the borders were the worst ones, but there were many others. It felt like those on the left were doing everything possible to make Trump look reasonable by comparison.

Early on during the Trump years it was clear that the left was not up to the task of defeating or countering him. Performative and feelgood measures were given priority over substantive measures, i.e., DEI trainings became in vogue. For many on the left, particularly the more educated ones, being against Trump became a lifestyle brand. As much as I opposed Trump, I never considered myself to be part of “The Resistance.”

The favorites of the left in the Democratic primary in 2019-20 were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. She ran a campaign exclusively for the activist wing of the party while he was advocating for quasi-socialism. Both advocated for and helped elevate toxically unpopular ideas. Had either of them been nominated, Trump would be finishing his second term.

Although Biden won, a major theory of the left proved to be dead wrong. Trump improved his standing with Hispanic voters despite his supposedly toxic stance on immigration. The entire theory promoted by the left for how to do better with Hispanics was completely discredited. That the left was wrong is not by itself disqualifying, everyone gets things wrong. What is disqualifying is the response from immigration activists. Rather than acknowledge they were wrong and adjust their strategy, they have doubled down and insisted everything’s fine.

As president, Biden has treated the left very well, much better than Obama did or Clinton would have. They didn’t deserve that and their behavior since 2021 has made that clear. I certainly don’t blame the left for every problem there is, but they have not been helpful in any way lately. Many of the ideas they have convinced Biden to act on are either bad (pausing LNG export terminal approvals) or a waste of time (student debt).

Looking at the major economic problems today, it’s clear that we need to address the supply side of the economy. I have written about that many times. It’s too hard to build things, which includes everything from transmission lines to housing to nuclear plants. The center-left/centrist wing of the Democratic Party gets that, but the leftist wing does not.

The leftist wing doesn’t believe there is a problem that can’t be regulated, taxed or spent away. Taxing, spending and regulating are all legitimate tools and have their place, but they aren’t what’s needed the most now. Housing is too expensive? The answer from the left is to enact rent control, blame big corporations, tax billionaires, tax mansions, do anything but reduce the regulations that make it illegal to build housing. Like I said, they don’t get it.

Red tape is going to need to be reduced substantially if Democrats are going to achieve many of their goals. That is particularly true on energy, but the leftist wing disagrees. In their eyes, regulation can never be bad. At best, they want to keep all regulations in place. Otherwise, they want to add more layers of bureaucracy so as to make sure “everyone gets a say.” That is a great way to ensure nothing ever gets built.

We live in a world of tradeoffs. The left is not the only group guilty of missing that, but they are the biggest offenders on my side of the aisle. If we want to address energy and housing affordability, among other things, regulations are going to have to be cut down on. We can either address those issues or we can keep everything exactly as it is. It won’t be both.

If we get the building boom we need, will there be bad things that happen because of it? Yes, there will be, but there will be many more good things. What those on the left don’t get is you can’t prevent every bad thing from happening. When you try, you prevent good things from happening.

Perfection doesn’t exist and opposing everything that isn’t perfect guarantees nothing will ever get done. There are those on the left who prefer that nothing ever gets done. I wish they would be honest and stop lying about how they want things to get built, just “not like that.”

The center-left acknowledges that tradeoffs exist and many of its adherents are proposing good ideas reflecting that reality. The left has opted to dig their heads in the sand and insist we can build more stuff without having to deal with tradeoffs. I hope they change their minds, but I’m not holding my breath.

At the end of the day, I care about accomplishing substantive things. How it gets done is not important. If it means taxing, spending or regulating, I’m all for it. If it means the opposite, I’m all for it. We need to be dynamic, nimble and flexible and avoid ideological straightjackets.  

It’s common for someone to say, “I didn’t leave X, X left me.” I’m not going to do that here. The left didn’t leave me, I left them. The left was right about most major issues in the 2000s, which is why I considered myself one of them. They are wrong about almost everything today and show no sign of shifting gears, which is why I am not a part of that crowd and don’t think well of them. I don’t know what the future holds, but for now I’m content to be in the center/center-left wing of the Democratic Party.