Legendary Democratic political strategist James Carville is on a mission against “wokeness,” but it is conservatives who can learn the most from his efforts.
Carville began on Monday by saying that the election of the more temperamentally moderate Democrat Troy Carter in last weekend’s Louisiana special congressional election showed that “voters voted against wokeness.” He elaborated in a Vox interview in which he broadened his critique beyond Louisiana, saying that Democrats have suffered nationally because “wokeness is a problem” and that in woke progressivism, “there’s too much jargon and there’s too much esoterica, and it turns people off.”
As often happens, Carville is correct. Yet the more Carville spoke, the more apparent it became that his criticism was more with Democratic “messaging” than with Democratic substance. Still, whether Carville agrees or not, so much of the substance of today’s political Left is so antithetical to Middle American thinking that mere messaging won’t suffice to hide its political unattractiveness.
Yet while conservatives are adept at taking quick potshots at the extreme positions of many of today’s Democrats, conservative messaging, too, is lacking. They have yet to create a sustained and effective, vote-moving narrative about how the hard Left’s agenda dominates the donkey party and why the electorate should consider it anathema.
Part of the problem, granted, is Republicans’ own preoccupation with the conspiracy theories, flood of lies, and extreme rhetoric of Trumpism. It’s hard to explain why the other side is a menace when too many on your own side are promoting feverish nonsense.
Nonetheless, a combination of lived experience and survey data, not just raw “pro/con” numbers but intensity of feeling (in other words, how likely an issue actually is to determine voting behavior), should help conservatives shape a comprehensive counternarrative to Democratic wokeness. The more important but more difficult part of that will be to offer a positive alternative. The easier part, but one in which Republicans’ scattershot approach has made them less politically effective than they should be, is to drive home just how radical and dangerous the Democratic leftism can be.
Against wokeness, Middle America doesn’t want to defund police departments. Against wokeness, Middle America doesn’t think “protests” should become confrontational or lawless. Against wokeness, Middle America doesn’t want biological males to ruin the athletic opportunities for our daughters, grand-daughters, and nieces. Against wokeness, Middle America doesn’t think charitable nuns should be forced to participate in the provision of insurance coverage for abortions.
Middle America doesn’t think climate change is a major “crisis” that requires putting everything down and dramatically overhauling how we live. Middle America doesn’t support the Green New Deal. Middle America doesn’t think our borders should be wide open. We don’t support “sanctuary cities.” We don’t think free healthcare should be offered to illegal immigrants.
We are worried about race relations and think too much racism still exists; but we resent being told that America’s soul is racist, that whites (and only whites) are inherently racist and blameworthy for every wrong that every white person has ever committed. We reject the idea that “systems” and “institutions” (rather than individuals) are hopelessly racist, especially given the obvious reality that almost every American institution has rules aggressively counteracting racism.
Wokesters want to keep conservative thought out of college (and high school!) classes, while providing “safe spaces” for “victimized” students when a conservative thought dares enter their surroundings. They want to keep Christian school groups from requiring that officers be Christian, even though other belief-centered groups (pro-choice, Islamic, or whatever) are allowed to reserve their officer spots for their own adherents. Most of the country recoils from such double standards.
The woke Left hates Israel, but an overwhelming majority of the public supports the Jewish state. The woke Left romanticizes Castro’s Cuba and Che Guevara, but most of America disagrees. Wokesters want a much smaller military, and they want what remains to focus on social justice; ordinary people want a strong military focused on deterring wars and advancing U.S. interests.
No matter how much the Left yells otherwise, people, both black and white, overwhelmingly support requiring identification at polling places. No matter what the Left says, they want to preserve history by evaluating statues and monuments on a case by case basis, in context, rather than tearing them down wholesale — and we certainly still revere our founders, whom the Left seems to hate viscerally. Mostly, we do not think the United States has an overall immoral history domestically or internationally but that instead, this nation is a force for decency and justice worldwide.
Wokesters won’t believe it, but the country doesn’t want class warfare, doesn’t support high death taxes, doesn’t support forced unionization, doesn’t oppose school choice, doesn’t want a more aggressive IRS, doesn’t want to pack the Supreme Court, doesn’t want a war on domestic fuels production, doesn’t want race-based college admissions, doesn’t want race-based “reparations,” doesn’t support abortion on demand or abortions for minors without parental notice, doesn’t support sex-change operations for minors, and doesn’t want to give up private health insurance.
Oh, and as Carville says, Middle America hates how college faculty lounges sound, recoil at fake words such as “Latinx” and “cisgender,” and has no idea what the difference is between “queer” and “gay” or between “transgender” and “intersex.”
On subject after subject, the woke Left is out of touch with most of the country. And on subject after subject, the woke Left dominates the Democratic Party leadership. If Republicans can’t win against such radicalism, Republicans are pathetically inept.
