The Left had a difficult year

Its internal splits were pronounced

Andrew Sullivan writes,

2023 showed us the mindless grift of Kendi’s scam at BU, the end of affirmative action in the Ivies, the mediocrity of Claudine Gay, and the racial hatred that will always come when certain entire groups of people are deemed oppressors, and others deemed oppressed. This is not about college crazies. It’s about the core foundations of liberal democracy — which DEI and its guiding philosophy of critical race theory specifically aims to destroy.

I don’t know whether the Democrats or the Republicans had a better year in 2023. I don’t keep score of that game.

But setting aside electoral politics, the left had a difficult year. The center-left had to watch as Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policy took a major hit from the Supreme Court—a hit that a reasonable person has to agree was well deserved. They had to watch as young activists threw tantrums in organizations, insisted on ever-weirder ideas about sexual identity, and sided with Hamas after October 7. And they had to watch the hearing at which university Presidents were exposed as fools.

Matt Goodwin offers a similar litany of problems for the left, saying that in 2023 we learned that “multiculturalism isn’t working, something’s rotten in the universities, the politics of immigration is back, national populism is here to stay, and woke ideology is a serious problem.”

Zachary Marshall, editor of the Campus Reform web site, makes the point that

The left and far left on campus are heading toward a collision. 

In 2023, the left alienated its valuable supporters among elite Jews. As of the 1980s,

the typical non-Jewish elite still leaned somewhat conservative. The split among non-Jews were only 17 points in net conservatism, but among Jews, it was an incredible 48-point split.

That is from Cremieux Recueil (pointer from Moses Sternstein). The point is made more clearly in his accompanying chart. Jewish elites were overwhelmingly on the left. They have stayed with the left even though it was sometimes difficult to do so.

But in 2023 leading universities unambiguously declared themselves a hostile environment for Jews. This is a trauma that could produce a dramatic realignment. I could give many examples of progressive Jews who are struggling with cognitive dissonance, but here is one. And trust me that there are others much farther along in questioning their desire to stay strictly within the progressive peer group.

I do not see these Jews flocking to Trump (speaking of whom, the right has its own schism to be concerned about), but many of them are now done with their erstwhile social justice allies. In Jewish neighborhoods, the rainbow yard signs are coming down, replaced by “We stand with Israel.” Jews who used to rely exclusively on the NYT are now also paying attention to Bari Weiss.

How does the schism on the left resolve itself? Eventually, perhaps the center-left fades away, as its members die off. Or perhaps many of today’s young activists return to more traditional liberal values. Perhaps the fear and hatred of the right remains strong enough to hold the left together.

But I don’t see how the schism truly heals if the strident social justice wing remains as prominent, demanding, and unreasonable as was the case in 2023.

substacks referenced above:

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Part 1: What We Learned in 2023

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Dec. 23, 2023 Weekly Recap & Good Reads

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The Cultural Power of Elite Immigrants

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https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-second-coming-of-donald-trump-39c?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2