Virginia: Harbinger or Outlier?

An anti-Trump protester in Baltimore.
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In what Democrats surely will tout as a repudiation of Donald Trump and his politics, a tidal wave swept through Virginia last night, sweeping into office both Ralph Northam and the first transgender person to hold statewide elected office.  The highest voter turnout in twenty years for a gubernatorial election would seem to imply that the Democratic base has been energized by last year's presidential election. Is that a surprise? 

Republicans will belittle the result.  The governor's mansion was already in Democratic hands.  It's not uncommon for midterm elections to swing away from the results of the previous national election, they will say.  They will argue that northern Virginia's increasing political sway and the influence the federal government has there taints the electorate and disproportionately favors Democratic candidates. However, Virginia, along with the few other states that still can be swung from election to election, is important. Really important. And this result will be scrutinized until next year's midterm elections give the nation a much clearer picture of where Trump stands with American voters. 

But was this actually a Trump referendum? Mike Cernovich, a brash alt-right media figure with a sizable following, labeled last night's result a slaughter for the Republican party but not for Trump.  Trump claims to be unaffected by this result because Virginia's Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, distanced himself from the president, hoping to appeal to moderates who are adrift and horrified by the unpresidential behavior of the tweeter-in-chief. Running what was until the end generally a high-minded campaign, Gillespie got pummeled.  Cernovich concluded that Gillespie's only chance was to have embraced Trump rather than to have pushed him away.  

"People who voted for Trump didn't leave their houses to vote for Ed Gillespie." Gillespie and his moderate message didn't resonate with the still-agitated Republican contingent that believes that making American great again requires a no-prisoners mindset.  

"We don't live in moderate times, people. Anyone who tells you that we live in moderate times does not understand the cultural zeitgeist," said Cernovich last night in a Periscope broadcast. "There are now two political forces in the U.S. that matter.  There is the "Chapo Traphouse" crew and then there's MAGA.  Everyone else is going to do what they are told to do."  While it is true that Northam is himself a moderate, he was elected by the full spectrum of the Democratic party, which united behind Northam in order to send Trump an unmistakable message.

By way of explanation, Chapo Traphouse is the name of a wildly popular extreme left podcast that attempts to be the voice of the left's response to the alt-right movement. The podcasters are young, crass, snarky, rude, and definitely lean socialist. Alternately known as the "Dirtbag Left," this movement, according to William Paterson University political science professor John Mason, is a "counter-reaction that has been building for a decade.  They are very anti-establishment and believe neoliberalism as a doctrine has failed and they want centrist Democrats to acknowledge that it was their failure that destroyed the working class and allowed this atrocity to take place in the White House."

He continues. "It's the feeling that the new liberal agenda resulted in a whole generation of young Americans being shafted, locked into a gig economy, loaded down with student debt, and no access to health care.  A reaction has been building against Democratic politicians of the 90s who tried to make a compromise with corporate capitalism and then defined liberalism around issues of diversity, immigration, women's rights and so on, while riding along with the shafting of the working class."

So, is Cernovich right? Are today's moderates feckless versions of Neville Chamberlain, the spineless 1930s-era British prime minister whose policy of appeasement gave rise to Hitler and National Socialism?  Are those among us who long for a return to moderation, civility, respect, and, ultimately, compromise, engaging in mass delusion?  Yes, says Cernovich.

"We live in extreme times. Polarizing times," he says. He claims that Marxism, represented by the Dirtbag Left, and MAGA, represented by Trump and his followers, are the only two movements in America.   

So does Amber Frost. It was Frost who coined "Dirtbag Left" in an attempt to categorize the feeling, outlook, and approach of the nation's disaffected and restless youth.  Frost is the editor-at-large of the alt-left periodical "Current Affairs." She authored a piece called "The Necessity of Political Vulgarity" in which she concludes that "vulgarity has always been employed in revolutionary rhetoric. Being mean is a crucial rhetorical weapon of the politically excluded."

"We now have a right wing that's completely dispensed with the idea of being genteel," she says.  "These alt-right people have abandoned traditionally conservative ideas and etiquette. They are no longer a necessary part of the conservative identity.  It's significant. We're (Democrats) not going to win this by adhering to good manners.  You have to scare them. You have to be meaner and grosser than they are," she says. 

Charlottesville, Virginia, by dint of its activism with regard to a statue of Robert E. Lee, became a battleground between these competing ideologies. A white supremacist rally (being fair to remember that all white supremacists are probably alt-right but not all alt-right are white supremacists) that ended tragically exposed the hateful underbelly of ethnocentric white America and was met in the ensuing weeks by counterprotests staged by elements of the Dirtbag Left.  The Black Student Alliance gathered around a statue of Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia and accused him of rape and racism and labeled him an enduring symbol of white privilege.  "Fuck white supremacy!" was their chant that night.  The protesters seemed intent on shocking people out of their white privilege indolence. Their tactics were exactly as Frost describes them–vulgar and mean. Effective? To the extent that it garnered attention, yes. Will Jefferson become a pariah as a result? Doubtful.  

In condemning the liberal elite, who as Mason says defined liberalism around such high-minded ideals as diversity, women's rights, and immigration, she says that "liberalism as a culture produced a very intense snobbishness that people picked up on and they resented.  You can't work with or on behalf of people that you have contempt for."  Limousine liberals, as they are derisively labeled, talk the talk but do not walk the walk. 

It was Bernie Sanders who first picked up on this youthful disaffection with the not-liberal-enough Democratic platform.  Hillary Clinton couldn't connect with this movement. To the Dirtbag Left, Hillary Clinton is boring, unimaginative, old school.  Frankly, the Democrats nominated the wrong candidate.  Had Bernie been their nominee, he would have garnered all the votes that Hillary got plus a much greater number of Dirtbag Left votes. Those voters instead voted third party or stayed home.  In an election decided by just a few million votes, this mistake likely cost the Democrats the White House. The problem, of course, is that Sanders never had a chance because his own party's leaders colluded with the Clintons to fix the nomination. 

The Dirtbag Left is more liberal, more activist, and more motivated than any recent Democratic faction. With its roots in the Occupy movement of 2008, they promise to match MAGA's tactics in pursuit of their ideals. Their anti-capitalist view is anathema to everything that MAGA stands for. It's marxism vs. capitalism. Again.   Dirtbag Left adherents are agitating for their vision of a Utopian society, and while free education,  free health care, and a basic universal income are wonderfully noble concepts that reasonable people would agree are fine ideas so long as we can find a way to pay for them,  they are complete pipe dreams given our current system of government, balance sheet, and tax structure.  The United States already is $20 trillion dollars in debt and each year that number goes up. Is such deficit spending sustainable?  Not forever.  

One thing we know for certain is that Americans are steadfast in their refusal to give back any benefit the government has extended to them.  Despite needing to go on a fiscal diet in the worst way, Americans just won't push away from the table. Its a terrible societal failing. Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid?  Hell no.  Abolish the home mortgage deduction?  Not unless you want to vaporize the American dream, claims the real estate lobby.  Ironically, both political extremes share the same concerns about loss of individual liberties and economic opportunity.  They, however, have wildly differing ideas for dealing with these issues. 

So, the battle lines are drawn. The Democrats now understand their their future depends on moving farther left. Much as MAGA left moderate Republicans without a voice, the Dirtbag Left is in the process of marginalizing whoever still clings to centrist Democratic ideology.  The Virginia election, while not indicative of this, nevertheless is a glimpse at the Democratic game plan. Moderates better either find a voice and mobilize or get out of the way, because the political landscape looks like it is going get much more ugly, much more violent, much more passionate.  These are, as Mike Cernovich states, polarizing times indeed.  

Gear up.