A coalition of Princeton’s liberal and progressive organizations hosted a ‘Walkout For Our Futures’ last Friday, in response to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. Like many others, we were fearful, dejected, and most of all, angry — and understandably, sought to make this sentiment known. This anger, however, was expressed by some protestors in a manner that was not only unproductive but also incendiary.
One of the protesters said, “I have hope in the fact that Donald Trump, while morally depraved, is an idiot — a charlatan surrounded by people who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. I have hope in another catastrophic failure to deliver on [their] promises.”
“I have hope that when he replaces public servants with his loyal followers, the parts of the government that he needs to work for him will grind to a halt because every last one of them is just as dumb as he is,” they continued.
What democratic, egalitarian, or progressive purpose is served by ascribing idiocy to all of Trump’s administration — or by fantasizing about its failure? When progressives reduce Trump and his administration to incendiary insults, often attacking their intelligence and capability, his largely working-class, non-college-educated followers likely translate those insults as their own. While Democrats have argued that prioritizing upper-class interests and harming disempowered groups is the foundation of the Republican agenda, they have lost almost 30 percent of the party’s working-class voters to the Republicans in the past 10 years since Obama’s presidency. And this is where the hypocrisy lies: Democrats claim to champion the working-class, disadvantaged, and marginalized, yet too often in their rhetoric end up estranging and failing those it claims to support.
In a recently released statement responding to the results of the election, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders wrote, “It should come as no surprise that a Democratic party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class had abandoned them... Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” The current narrative of liberal superiority perpetuated by some progressives risks deepening the post-election divide and undermining the democratic and egalitarian values they aim to champion. As the embodiment of what much of America considers the “liberal elite,” Princeton progressives’ rhetoric matters and should be based on genuine humility and self-criticism — not in blanket blame or insults towards its opponents.
“Liberal elite” college students were not always the Democratic Party’s strongest proponents. Indeed, by the mid-20th century, the Democratic Party had reinvented itself to champion the interests of the working class and marginalized. Democrats underwent a realignment in the 1960s and 1970s around the Vietnam War protests, and Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini explained that this was the time in which working-class people began to break away from the Democratic Party. Slowly, affluent and college-educated liberals became the primary foundation of the party’s demographic today.
It is reasonable to argue that the Democratic Party advocates objectively better policies than the Republican Party that, in the long run, will improve the lives of the working class — or all Americans in general. But in America, has good politics ever just been good policy? For a party whose platform has traditionally uplifted working-class interests but is now dominated by an affluent, college-educated demographic, divisive culture, language, and rhetoric can influence voters more powerfully than policy alone. As journalist Nicholas Kristof put it, “Democrats often have policies to redistribute incomes, but what many struggling Americans want is also a redistribution of dignity.”
While another strain of post-electoral rhetoric has focused on party unity, it often overlooks the party’s internal hypocrisies, which we fear might fracture in the face of opposition. “Infighting amongst the ranks on the left when the body of the Harris-Walz campaign is still warm does nothing but tear apart coalitions and helps nobody but Donald Trump, who is fueled by division,” wrote our colleague Charlie Yale in their recent article.
But this fear of division has, perhaps, led progressives into a dangerous state of ideological inertia — a state encased by a sense of elite, “educated” hubris that jumps to prescribe insults at the expense of self-reflection. If our fear of division prevents us from critically examining how our rhetoric affects those we claim to fight for, our “unity” may be more counterproductive than we realize.
The reevaluation of the progressive agenda — on the grounds of its rhetoric, hypocrisy, and alienation of the working class — is essential in mending the post-election political divide that plagues us all. This is not a concession of the values of justice or egalitarianism that progressives are driven by. If anything, it is, and will be, a critical reinforcement of it. Unity is more than mere solidarity — it’s about holding each other accountable to the ideas we claim to uphold. If we can’t confront our contradictions, how could we work to heal the divisions breaking the country apart?
Siyeon Lee is a sophomore from Seoul, South Korea intending to major in History. She is an assistant Opinion editor at the ‘Prince’. She can be reached at siyeonlee[at]princeton.edu.
Genevieve Shutt is a junior from Vale, N.C. majoring in Anthropology. She can be reached at gs7302[at]princeton.edu.
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