Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Sometime after the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the American Left began exploring, then embracing, and finally enacting agendas that proved not only unhinged and unworkable but also fatal to the left-wing project itself.
How did the party so alienate the middle classes when it once professed it was the sole party and protector of those in-between? How did the Democratic Congress sink to a 16 percent approval rating in a current liberal Quinnipiac University poll? How could 63 percent of registered voters view the Democrats unfavorably in a recent Wall Street Journal poll?
In sum: despise the middle class, then lose elections.
At the turn of the millennium, globalization generated massive wealth by opening a 6-billion-person consumer market to the rising global powers of Silicon Valley, media, academia, law, finance, and transnational corporations. The result was a Democrat Party increasingly dominated by a new and different sort of “committed” left-wing billionaire.
The Democrat Party, by the turn of the century, had become a home for the ultra-rich, the upscale professional classes, and the subsidized poor. And its new initiatives reflected the values, ideas—and pretensions—of the globalized bicoastal elites, from reimagining a sustainable green economy to “diversity” and apologetics for America’s culpability abroad.
In the ancient days of the 1990s, Bill Clinton ensured that the Democrat party was for strong borders, legal-only immigration, and protection of union jobs from cheap imported labor. Abortion was to be safe, legal—and “rare.” Now, abortion is often praised and worshipped by the left, as if it is integral to saving a warming planet.
Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 Democrat Party platforms would have been written off as racist and xenophobic.
Once illegal immigration began spiking under Obama, and the old union lunch bucket classes were nearly rendered inert by globalization, the mainstream party began pivoting to open borders.
It assumed that impoverished illegal aliens would soon become new progressive constituents to replace vanishing American working-class voters. “Demography is Destiny” and “The New Democratic Majority” became party mantras.
By 2020, the party was controlled by open-borders radicals. Illegal immigration was seen as an adjunct to new Diversity/Equity/Inclusion obsessions. Suddenly, an entire array of racialist compound nouns appeared—white privilege, white rage, white guilt, white supremacy—without any consideration that whites, in total numbers, comprise the largest group of poor people, or that poor white people usually have zero in common with elite white progressives.
In the Democrat bizarro world, the operating assumption seemed to be that if an illegal alien from southern Mexico set foot into the U.S., then he was immediately branded as a “minority” with legitimate grievances deserving of reparatory treatment from a country he scarcely knew and with which he had no prior experience, good or bad. It became so moral to break the law to welcome in illegal aliens and amoral to enforce the law and try to return the unlawful to their homes.
In response, colleges began granting reduced tuition to foreign nationals unlawfully residing in-state, while charging out-of-state American citizens the full costs.
Joe Biden’s open borders that had allowed somewhere from 10–12 million illegal entries were the final manifestations of the Democrat embrace of illegal immigration, as the foreign-born residing in the U.S. reached all-time highs, both in real numbers and percentages of the population. It was a suicidal party transformation—offending the middle classes and alienating minority Democrats who were left to cope in underserved communities with vast influxes of foreign nationals, half of whom originated outside of Mexico.
The Democrat Party had always claimed credit for landmark civil rights legislation that had morphed into affirmative action. And under Obama, it went further into equality-of-result “diversity/equity/inclusion.”
But in the process, the original paradigm of affirmative action—reparatory treatment for black Americans dealing with the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and what was increasingly now called “systemic racism”—devolved into claiming all who were not so-called “white” or “male” merited racial, ethnic, or gender-based preferences in hiring, promotions, and admissions. Caricature followed as the antebellum racist 1/16 one-drop rule returned, and fakers like Elizabeth Warren gamed the admittedly corrupt system.
The old relationship between class and race was forgotten. DEI quickly became an albatross around the New Democrat Party’s neck when the richest ethnic group in America, Indian-Americans (such as Zohran Mamdani, the “African-American” college applicant), professional women, upscale gays, and the transgendered were seen as making up the new victimized majority who had suffered from the victimizing minority of white males (many of whom were poor).
In short, under Democrat auspices, there were now too few victimizers for the increasing array of victims. Affirmative action had sunk into an absurd tribal caricature of civil rights that was not logical, fair, or popular. Certainly, the entire binary idea of Marxist oppressed versus oppressors was unworkable in a multiracial democracy.
Stranger still, as an offshoot of DEI, the left transformed the ancient recognition of gender dysphoria (a rare biological condition by traditional medical accounts affecting about .1% of the population) into the new civil rights cause célèbre. For the elites, the trans cause emerged as the unquestioned successor to civil rights, women’s lib, and gay marriage—as if to assume in Soviet style, “Give me a new liberal crusade, and then I’ll find an oppressed group.”
On some campuses, ten to twenty percent of students claim they were open to “transitioning.”
But what followed was incoherent. The transgendered were to be defined as no different from their adopted biological kindred sex. Indeed, transgendered biological males began competing in women’s sports, though transgendered biological women rarely competed in men’s athletics.
Biological men began undressing in female locker rooms, as students and professors began listing their “preferred pronouns.” Few cared that the trans sports movement was antithetical to the landmark efforts of women to attain sports parity. It was transphobic to object to sexually explicit transgender burlesque among audiences of teens and children. Polls showed that 70-80 percent of respondents disapproved of biological men competing in women’s sports and drag shows with underage audiences.
Bill Clinton had also once campaigned on “100,000” new police officers and tough sentences for violent juvenile offenders. But as liberals morphed into progressives and wokesters, crackpot “critical legal theory” and “critical race theory” began to dominate left-wing criminology.
In big blue cities, crime itself was suddenly defined as socially constructed: it was illegal to shoplift sneakers or candy bars only because rich white men did not need to steal either, and therefore shoplifting itself was not really a crime.
Career criminals must not be indicted, convicted, and imprisoned for their most recent violent crimes, given that a violent, racist, and systemically unfair society itself was culpable for making them violent and career criminals in the first place.
One result was a crime wave that hit major blue cities—exacerbated by the COVID lockdowns, the death of George Floyd and the subsequent four-month-long 2020 riots. “Defund the police” became a Democratic mantra—at least until it threatened to wreck the party and alienate the minority base itself.
Democrats used to talk about “ecology” and “conservation” and were noted for “recycling,” saving “endangered species,” spearheading “anti-pollution efforts,” and ensuring “open spaces.” Yet from the Obama era to the end of the Biden administration, all that prior stewardship was seen as little more than boring, so-so half measures.
Instead, civilization itself was now said to be near extinction, requiring Draconian measures from on high to save the planet.
So global warming morphed into “climate change,” as pollution was redefined not as noxious fumes but as heat itself and the release of natural carbon dioxide. And “climate change” demanded that the middle classes would have to curb their appetites, transition to costly wind and solar “renewables,” and forgo the formerly bountiful and cheap power from natural gas, nuclear, and coal generation.
Stranger still, the elite architects of “fundamentally transforming” society were themselves exempt. It was as if their big SUVs, private jets, 5,000-square-foot homes, heated pools, and air-conditioned estates were necessary accoutrements enabling our left-wing elite to hammer out a new era of “limits” for everyone else. The high-flying multimillionaire Al Gore and billionaire John Kerry, along with the usual Hollywood celebrities and nepo babies, needed the old perks of affluence in order to better reduce affluence for everyone else. As a general rule, the most iconic pontificators about rising oceans and a sizzling planet were the most likely to own a seafront estate or an air-conditioned mansion.
Universities were always bastions of liberal ideology. But now they also went with the new hard-left trend and became not protectors of free speech, not refuges for oddball, unpopular, and eccentric thinkers, and not custodians of age-old scholarship, the teaching of the Western canon, and disinterested science. Instead, life was too short in the woke mind to waste such a valuable progressive asset on real research and apolitical instruction.
So rather abruptly, universities became extensions of the new progressive Democrat woke project. Civil rights legislation and eventual Supreme Court decisions were simply ignored as race and gender now defined the identities of students, staff, and faculty. SATs and comparative ranking of high school GPAs were deemed inherently racist and unfair.
“Theme houses” became little more than racially segregated dorms. “Affinity” graduations were unapologetically racially separated.
Israel was no longer a liberal Democrat’s admirable oasis in a sea of Middle East autocracy, terrorism, and religious fundamentalism, but became a “settler colonialist” oppressor. Jews on campus were harassed with impunity and became inseparable from demonized “Zionists,” who themselves were no longer immigrant generations escaping the trauma of the Holocaust to the biblical land of the Jews but Western colonial interlopers and oppressors.
Palestinian terrorists were “freedom fighters.” Foreign students were no longer rare on American elite campuses, where once meritocracy had made room for thousands of rural and small-town high schoolers to enroll in bicoastal elite colleges.
Instead, one million strong foreign students—mostly left-wing and the majority from illiberal regimes, like Communist China and Middle East autocracies—often made up 20-30 percent of top college enrollments, given they were gouged by campuses to pay 110 percent of costs. Some often spearheaded pro-Hamas demonstrations and changed the campus dynamics of protests.
For the new Democrats, the evolving university, like the new media and new corporate boardroom, was seen as an invaluable extension of the party itself, even as their new and woke explicit biases polled terribly and offended the majority of still-silent Americans. It is no surprise that in current polls, the Ivy League now polls as dismally as the media, and its graduates seem to be less impressive to employers year by year.
So, these same Jacobin transformations infected foundations, the media, and corporations, rendering them deeply unpopular embarrassments rather than enablers of the Democrat Party.
In sum, almost every new issue the new Democrat Party embraced proved an anathema to the middle class. Yet the party seemed almost uniquely prescient in foreseeing that progressive policies would bankrupt the country, hopelessly divide it, and leave it unworkable. Being talked down to by neurotic and dysfunctional elites only made the messengers force multipliers of their toxic messages.
If the Democrats were not addicted to woke, they would relegate all these suicidal policies to their graveyard of political misadventures, alongside the failed visions of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
But like all addicts, they can survive neither with nor without their fixes.
Great detail on how we got here with the progressive left. It is downright scary that we came so close to fulfilling their fascist dream. Although not totally out of the woods yet, articles such as yours help a great deal in ensuring we never experience the progressive left’s nightmare for our country.
Public education is the key to America’s success or collapse. With education of the truth, juries will be responsible, apolitical judges will preside, law will be followed, values will be fairly upheld, and the spiritual condition of the country so much improved where tribalism and the current Democratic platform will go up in smoke. People are looking for the truth!
Thank you Professor Hanson for another well written and informative piece.
The Democrat Party sees the writing on the wall and will be doubling down on trying to corrupt the electoral process.
If the current Republicans majority, before the midterms, doesn’t put into law election reforms such as same day in person voting, photo voter identification and secure paper ballot chain of custody, we will know for sure that Trump hasn’t done the one thing we need to remain a constitutional republic.
DO IT NOW!
Hopefully Democrats are not reading what professor Hanson has so eloquently pointed out as being their path to irrelevance as it could be a roadmap for them to initiate a comeback. If only they had the wherewithal to turn their ideological ship around. I’m hoping they stay deaf to any suggestions of moderation.
Another good essay. Thank you.
I will add that people who understand the current state of affairs need only speak softly but firmly. Stop holding your tongue for fear of offending someone by speaking a truth. Others are listening and agreeing but do not have enough courage to speak. Each time we announce some truth, we shift the Overton Window back a tad toward where it needs to be.
The reference to addiction is apt, indeed. As a child of the ‘60’s with a subsequent history of opioid addiction in mid-life (long recovered) as a professional, I have some validating perspective on this. I also recovered from my youthful liberalism. I can report that the spittle-laced, bulging-eyed, denizens of today’s ‘protest’ mobs are as high on self-righteousness as I was when I was like them in the’60’s protests or, later, on fentanyl. That raging self-righteousness produces the same flood of pleasure chemicals in the brain as fentanyl or heroin. I should add that I also have experience in treating people in early recovery on the detox unit of a rehab – so I know of what I speak. Victor is entirely correct.
Clear description and analysis of how seriously flawed policies have failed, although it has taken some time. Thank you.
It would be helpful to see VDH do a description and analysis of what seems to be the near total collapse of honest journalism. It seems that 2024 election was a clear repudiation of the dishonest legacy media, but that may just be wishful thinking on my part.
There was so much to type to get into this article, but except for indirectly, I didn’t see any explicit reference to the squad. That those scum (or is it scum-ettes?) can get elected to Congress is reason enough to not vote Democrat for anything beyond dogcatcher.
Splendid article. But you forgot to mention the government takeover of K-12 education. People tend not to notice since it began almost 200 years ago. It’s America’s best example of systemic racism.
I cannot argue with anything written here but I would prefer 20 paragraphs over 38 to get the main point across!
It is an up hill fight to defeat the new progressivism. Control of the media, the universities, large swathes of the American corporate corner offices, American arts and culture, now the K12 classrooms, hold huge sway and are interested genenerational. Even with the recent polling numbers, it will be tough to dislodge these poisonous attitudes and policies
vdh from the top rope. appreciate the insights sir
Another simple explanation yet brilliant analysis by the always erudite Victor Davis Hanson. He is my primary go-to source for understanding patterns of human nature and explaining in historical context, along with Mark Levin for constitutionalism. A Democratic-Republic seems to have historically never lasted more than a few centuries. America was on the same trajectory with Obama and Biden. We seem to get the person we deserve as president at the time they are most. FDR during the Great Depression, Wilson as the new face of progressivism, Carter in response to Watergate, Reagan as a result of Carter’s ineptitude, and Obama, a bridge too far, because of the neo-cons. Fortunately, Trump came along and put a monkey wrench in the left’s designs for America. Trump may have only delayed the inevitable, as Biden did more to destroy our country than any president before him. Trump has only a short window to reverse the damage done, and in reality, it will take decades to repair the woke addition gripping America. As successful as Trump has been to implements policies that change course, it will take a succession of even better statesman rather than politicians. Mob democracy benefits favored interest group constituents. Can this be curtailed by awareness in the electorate, and the courts return to the constitutionality of originalism that has made America a more perfect union? Can we continue to a new golden age that counters past limitations of free and open societies?
Great article, Victor. I enjoyed reading about your position on the correlation of globalization and the resulting effects on the political systems.
Another excellent summary of catastrophic social-engineering,
as Paul Johnson several times pointed out.
I hope we will Never get rid of TRUMP!
CE Gremillion
Thank you for the article, Victor, the relationship of globalization to the democratic party was of great interest.
Fantastic article and laser accurate.
The 2030 census is expected to reallocate ten or dozen congressional seats away from blue states and toward some red states. That’s like losing Massachusetts and gaining a Tennessee. This will be in time for the 2032 presidential election. Beginning with the early 2030s national political power will substantially reside with what are presently the red states.
The current electoral map holds for three more national election years, in 2026, in 2028 and 2030. The progressive Democrats will probably go all out to elect every kook they can, but the clock is ticking. By 2032 Sanders, Warren and Pelosi may well no longer be in office. If they are, they’ll certainly be old.
The Dems have a shot at winning the presidency with a kook in 2028, especially if enough people are tired of Trump by then, and they’ll probably try, but once 2032 rolls around it’ll be tough to win with any candidate that isn’t palatable to the south.
If the progressive Dems survive long term it’ll probably be isolated to some deep blue states (and alas, we here in CA may be one of them), but as younger people take positions of power they’ll be substantially Hispanic and other minorities, the very people who have a hard time affording houses, paying for energy, or may be saddled with poorer quality schools or high college costs, not to mention fewer opportunties as so many industries head south. An open question is, will they see how these policies have harmed them, or will they double down?
It seems to me that much of what the radical Left pursues is an effort to one-up the more moderate position of their opposition. “We are ‘more’ compassionate, literate, understanding, and caring than anyone else” seems to be their goal. They never heard of Aristotle and his ‘moderation in all things’ makes for a good life.
The only reason Democrats get any votes is that they secured the major media outlets, funded by the globalists who are setting this destructive agenda, and the universities. Until recently, American taxpayers were paying the “private” media outlets via USAID to propagandize and confuse limited information voters. We must take our queues from President Trump and start reclaiming the universities, continue to make major media outlets irrelevant, and educate Americans on what our values were, and should be, rather than the woke suicidal values of the left.
The last sentence is pure gold.
FOR THOSE WHO LEARN FROM HISTORY, READ ABOUT A TRULY GREAT USA PRESIDENT NAMED CALVIN COOLIDGE WHO NEVER ATTACKED HIS POLITICAL OPPONENTS AND INSTEAD FOCUSED ON HIS POLICIES TO HELP AMERICANS. AND HE BELIEVED IN SMALL GOVERNMENT AND THE POWER OF CAPITALISM AND BUSINESS. AND HE WAS RIGHT. PERIOD.
brilliant analysis. The “truth shall set you free”; but not here in the lala land of blue states, nor blue cities. Their latte capucchino fools drone on with their “progressive” foolish platitudes and nonsense. Common sense and reason is gone, gone gone. The fools following the fools. ‘
This is the greatest, most free country there ever was. Wake up and smell the goodness; stop focusing on the bad and focus on the good.
Stay well, stay healthy.
Respectfully.
Another paragon of literary masterpiece Victor, thanks! All of your analysis is on point, however, to me, you left out the one salient item (unless my eyesight failed me!) that has disturbed me even before the debate with Biden showing his incapacity to hold office. Above all else, anyone in the party who perpetrated the lie that he was fully capable of running our country I personally consider a traitor of the highest order. No doubt they exist on both sides of the aisles. Putting my family and the families of EVERY AMERICAN in jeopardy is inexcusable! Sadly, as the cliche goes…’No one is above the law’ is now a fleeting buzz phrase holding absolutely little to no meaning for any of these political miscreants. As always, God bless America, POTUS, our military and Veterans.
Unfortunately, Americans are not very well informed. Many do not follow what the government does and they just vote the party line. Too many want everything for free and have been propagandized to believe that they are victims. The consequences are catastrophic, but the media and education in the U.S.A. have been taken over by liberals who lie constantly about conservatives and especially about President Trump.
There is a bright light. Young men are starting to see that liberals policies are dangerous to our freedoms and to the country’s survival. I’m praying that young women start to see the truth before it’s too late.
This piece is a thing of beauty. Note that woke academia has now infected unionized K-12 teachers and their schools. Without some vigorous intervention, new generations will be twisted beyond belief. That’s what the loonies really bank on and what parents need to confront.
These things are so obvious to anyone who reads our history of the past 100 years or so, or maybe back to the 1890s and the introduction of Statist ideas here from Europe, mostly Germany, that you have to be a “full fanatic freak” (“Kelly’s Heroes”) not to see and understand them. Sadly, so many of our fellow citizens cannot see and understand them, or refuse to, or see them through the lens of their Statist worldview.
Little confused with this sentence
Yet the party seemed almost uniquely prescient in foreseeing that progressive policies would bankrupt the country, hopelessly divide it, and leave it unworkable.
I would say quite opposite
Also, having foresight in foreseeing, composition wise not so elegant.
Am I missing something here.
Anyhow, Victor is one the last intellectual Mohicans of this age.
God speed
You miss a major nuance that (IMO) explains everything.
You write “ Certainly, the entire binary idea of Marxist oppressed versus oppressors was unworkable in a multiracial democracy.”
When you replace the Marxist binary of “oppressed versus oppressors” with the intersectional binary of the same name you have a social theory where both the current math & future headcount support the lunacy of the progressive project.
In fact, the absence of this rationale would be its validation for many true believers. Tongue in cheek, I remain among your biggest fans.