”The American public has clearly rejected the RGA’s (Red-Green Alliance) barbarous rhetoric and violence; universities have cracked down on illegal protests on their campuses, albeit unwillingly; Congressional investigations and hearings have savaged the Alliance’s claims to moral authority; and the election of Donald Trump is seen, rightly, as a total repudiation of the progressive left’s ideology and agenda….
“…As of yet, the RGA has very much not been stopped completely. It continues to fester in its totalitarian citadels of academia, the NGO industry, and the fringes of the American political establishment like the Democratic Socialists of America. Racist hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine are still very active. The Democratic party politicians the RGA owns are planning their next move. In short, the RGA is regrouping and reassessing its situation, contemplating its next steps and perhaps a new strategy. It will be back.”
Kerstein states that part of that strategy is to run a favored candidate in the 2028 presidential cycle, a successor to Bernie Sanders if you will, in the form of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now I don’t think very highly of Sandy “Squeaky” Cortez. We’re at the claw-machine part of the 2028 cycle where seemingly attractive names are bandied about and grasped for, without any idea if they are viable candidates in terms of exposure or fund-raising. I have a feeling that AOC will wear as well on the campaign trail as Kamala did in 2019. Most people forget that Kamala pulled in a lot of money and hype when she started in 2019 and never got a delegate.
However, Kerstein brings out two key points.
The first is that the totalitarian Left still lives. It may have been routed in 2024, but it was able to retreat in good order into its redoubts in higher ed and NGOs. More importantly it still possesses the key elements of mass and cohesion. Given those two attributes, it will continue to play a role in Democratic politics. Its defeat was telling, but not decisive. It will be back. In fact there is nothing in American social and political history from the past 50 years that would lead anyone to believe that they won’t play a role in 2028 and for years to come.
The second is something that is a bit more chilling:
“Nonetheless, with an establishment media hell-bent and determined to make her president, AOC could potentially get away with all of this. Moreover, it would be a grave mistake to think that she is “too far-left” to be elected. It is a truism of politics that everyone is unelectable until they’re electable.
“For example, if the US suffers a severe economic crisis under a Republican administration, the Democratic candidate will almost certainly win the next election, whoever they might be. If AOC is the Democrats’ nominee under such fortuitous circumstances—and she very well could be—it would be almost impossible to deny her the White House. Her far-left politics would be, at best, a non-issue.”
If the past is another country, then the future is science fiction. There was no one in 2013 who would have predicted that Trump was going to be elected in 2016, let alone Biden in 2020 or Trump again in 2024. For as down as the Democrats were in the 2024 cycle, running the worst candidate in American history and with the country chomping for change, they still came within 1.5% of the popular vote of Trump. Decisive yes, but closer than it should have been. The days of +9 and +18% landslides from 1980 and 1984 aren’t going to be walking through that door anytime soon.
The Democrats will have a puncher’s chance, not just in the 2026 midterms, but also in the 2028 cycle. The totalitarian/progressive Left, with its cohesion and mass, will have much more than a puncher’s chance to either secure the 2028 nomination outright, or pull a moderate-seeming nominee into its orbit as it did with Biden in 2020.
So while the American political system is looking for the new political equilibrium, the Left will be back. Don’t fall for all the giggly triumphalism regarding the fall of DEI or the rest, focus on mass and cohesion. Putting the Left into its political grave is going to be a long-term, recurring project.
Yes
I see a lot of attempts to promulgate bitterness, resentment, and envy–viz, Robert Reich asserting that McDonalds price increases will be driven by the CEO’s compensation, not by worker pay.
I also see quite a few people who are very disturbed by the idea of removing censorship at FB…some of them don’t seem to understand that the libel and slander laws remain in effect.
So yet, we are far from being able to declare anything like permanent victory. It would be nice, though if Republican fundraisers would give it a rest with the texts & emails advertising imminent disaster. And Trump also needs to focus a little less on the evils of the past. Time to advertise a little hope, along with realism.
This misses the key point — by 2028, our past misdeeds will really be catching up with us. Even if we assume that President Trump can slap down the Usual Suspects sufficiently hard to keep us out of war, the economic situation will probably have reached breaking point by then. The US is already largely de-industrialized, critically dependent on imports, and impossibly over-indebted. Something is going to crack, and the consequences of that are very difficult to predict.
Maybe we will be lucky — Big Law eviscerated; Big Regulation gutted; Teachers Unions destroyed; military spending cut by 70%; government jobs cut by 80%; media and universities cut down to size; factories and jobs returning to the US; government revenues increasing as the economy grows once more — but that is not the way to bet, especially since the Far Left would fight that all the way. Most other scenarios would be much worse, and then the occupant of the White House will not matter much anymore.
Cutting military spending by 70% is not on my wish list. Reforming how it is spent is. You don’t have to be a career vet to see that our actual military capabilities are all in the wrong direction. Even in the few areas where we have mostly kept up with technological changes, the scale is inadequate by an order of magnitude. We can not defend our allies and our access to vital overseas markets with what we have and where it is going. Given the practical difficulties of ramping up equipment, forces and technology, we are at the point of being unable to change the trajectory balance of fighting capabilities between the west and the developing Sino-Russian alliance.
We were in a similar situation in the early 1970’s when we gutted the armed forces by bleeding them out in Viet Nam. It took the better part of 10 years to rebuild the personnel (especially the non-commissioned ranks) and replace and upgrade our equipment. The size of the task we are currently facing is much larger while our available resources is smaller. Time is running out.
You could compare our strategic industrialization and raw material resource deficit as a similar situation. That effort has the notable advantage of being primarily an issue of incentivizing the private sector through financial inducement. The military revival has very little opportunity to attract existing capabilities from other actors, including overseas. Since we have driven large portions of our warriors from our forces, especially from the officer corps, we have the challenge of reforming without reliable, experienced, skilled and motivated leadership. In the 1970’s we had an emerging leadership in the services that was determined to rebuild fighting power after having suffered through the bleeding out from VN. These were largely leaders who fought as junior and field grade officers in VN and saw the senior officers complicity in the political conduct of the war.
Death6
The Republicans might — only might — prevail in 2028 if they can clean up the election process before then. The Democrats can’t win without cheating and stretching the rules.
One day, in-person, positive ID, no mail-in voting, no same-day registration, absolute minimum absentee ballots, and all counting (done by hand) done by midnight.
It amazes me how much of the public thinks taking weeks to count votes is normal. And that the results always favor the Democrats.
Anonymous aka Death 6 wrote: “We can not defend our allies.”
Who is this “we” you are talking about, Death 6? Are you volunteering to go and die in the mud somewhere far from the US on behalf of our worthless Swamp Creatures:
And who are these “allies” you are prepared to see your blood and treasure destroyed to defend? The worthless EuroScum who bad-mouth the US every chance they get? Why are these “allies” not able to defend themselves? Why should America girls & boys die to defend people who won’t defend themselves?
Fire most of the expensive Flag Officers (“Perfumed Princes”, to quote someone who knew what he was talking about), and refuse to give any business to military contractors which hire any of them. Pull all the US forces out of those 100+ bases around the world, bring them back to the US and start protecting the Southern border from the ongoing actual invasion of illegal aliens, some of whom are definitely here to harm you & yours in the US. Retire the carrier fleet — the vulnerable battleships of the 21st Century. Upgrade the nuclear deterrent, to make sure no-one attacks the US directly. And let the rest of the world take care of itself — we will even sell them the weapons, with a suitable profit mark-up. If that costs more than 30% of the current bloated Pentagon budget, I will be surprised.