”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