This commentary is by Philip Finkelstein, an independent journalist and writer from Vermont, with a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
One of the first op-eds I ever wrote was in 2017. I was about to graduate from college, and President Donald Trump was a year into his first term. He had narrowly beaten Hillary Clinton in an election that had shocked America. The polls had failed to predict the outcome.
It was my opinion then, and remains my opinion today, that Clinton lost the 2016 election not because she was a woman, or even because of the email debacle in which she was pilloried for calling Trump supporters “deplorables” — she lost that election because she strayed from her authentic center-left disposition to placate the far-left faction of the party.
It was in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died, that I knew Clinton was in trouble. She spoke about Islamophobia; Trump blamed immigration. He may have played on people’s fears and dog-whistled to racists, but the speech he gave then was more in touch and more in tune with a prevailing sentiment. He spoke frankly, thought plainly, like the average citizen, his finger on the pulse of America.
I blamed Clinton for not recognizing what Trump clearly saw as an opportunity and the Democrats’ biggest weakness: the far left. They had handed Trump the White House, I wrote back in 2017, because people were sick of being told how to think, and tired of being scared to speak their mind without feeling the sharp blade of social justice stab them in the back.
Trump capitalized on far-left foolishness then, and he did it again in 2024. He may have lost in 2020, but Trumpism was not repudiated in earnest as the polls had foretold; he received a massive turnout and performed well with voting blocs that defied identity politics. Yet, four years later, the Democrats somehow saw fit to run Kamala Harris, after Biden held on for far too long.
Just as Ruth Bader Ginsburg undid her legacy by not knowing when to step down, so too did Biden tarnish his lifetime of political service by narcissistically clinging to power. The blame may fall largely on him, but the real mystery is how the establishment — former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — thought it made sense to bypass the democratic process and anoint an unpopular vice president from California, who’d aligned herself with (and was unwilling to distance herself from) the far left on issues like gender-affirming care for transgender prisoners, as the party’s nominee?
Harris had never won a primary. Her unfavorable ratings were on par with Biden’s. The administration knew as much, keeping her out of the spotlight for most of her vice-presidential tenure as she developed a reputation for gaffes and tone-deaf messaging whenever she veered off script. Then, almost overnight, she was recast as the candidate of joy, loved by all.
Clinton — one of the most seasoned and skilled politicians ever to run for president — had not beaten Trump in Pennsylvania. How was Harris expected to do so, especially with her past comments on fracking, which she never adequately addressed, and after passing on Josh Shapiro for her vice-presidential pick?
None of it makes any sense. What’s more, the polls in the run-up to this election had margins that indicated that Trump, if he underpolled as in all previous elections, would win every swing state. But the polls could be trusted this time around, right? No, just as before, Trump voters flew under the radar of pollsters, and all of us were expected to be shocked by the unforeseen blowout. The truth is, the writing was always on the wall.
The Democrats need a rebirth. They need to excise the faction of the party that allowed Trump to paint everyone on the left as more deranged than his unhinged brand of populism. The far left is the problem. Without them, Trumpism would never have taken hold in America. In the end, leftists didn’t even turn out to vote for Harris — the closest thing they had to a champion — instead staying home or defecting to Jill Stein in cities like Dearborn, Michigan, while MAGA came out in droves.
What Elon Musk termed the “woke mind virus” is what pushed him and Joe Rogan into Trump’s camp, bringing with them the next generation of young men who feel disenfranchised within the Democratic Party. The far left made enemies and deserted its friends by chasing some distorted version of idealism. Why continue to entertain their unpopular, polarizing and misguided ideas? They’re not the Democratic base — they’re the fringe, a tumor poisoning the rest of the body.
In Vermont, Bernie Sanders is onto something when he says that the Democrats have abandoned the working class, but he still doesn’t fully get it — because he blames this purely on economics while neglecting the role of culture. It’s the cultural vibe of the Democratic Party that has fallen most out of touch with America. Outside of the liberal bubbles of big cities and the rare progressive state, there’s little love for those like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani or leading progressives like U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Trump now has less than three years to make America “great” again — an imperfect immune response. If the Democrats can manage to pick up on this obvious pattern — that Trumpism thrives only as an antagonist to the far left — then the party isn’t a complete lost cause; it can congressionally neuter Trump where he stands. Our democratic institutions will still need to withstand an aspiring tyrant, but just as crucially this election cycle, the Democratic Party needs to survive the far left and its blindly sanctimonious pursuit of ideological conformity.
