Reactionaries constantly tell us that the left is becoming more radical each day, and is using its vast cultural power to marginalize real America. The editor of Jacobin tells Ezra Klein, on the other hand, that the left has no power at all. Could he possibly be correct?
Yes, as applied to his part of the left. As I’ve noted many times before, there is a huge distinction between the woke and socialist versions of the left. The former has, as alleged by the right, moved to the left during the last decade, and drives progressive opinion on social media. It seeks and wields cultural, not political, power. The latter, led by Sanders and the Squad, is interested in issues of class and economic equality; it doesn’t much care about the 1619 Project, bathroom bills, and transgender athletes. It wants political power to help American workers, but it doesn’t have any. It represents a minority of the Democratic Party, and a small sliver of America as a whole, largely because it refuses to take cultural issues seriously.
The right, for its own cynical purposes, is fond of treating the two groups as if they were identical. In reality, there is a good argument that the great accomplishment of the reactionary right, and the great failure of the progressive left, has been in merging different strands of thought into a single, powerful movement with a narrative that is compelling and easy to understand.