The Left Has a Self-Righteousness Problem
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Politics, Race, Nonfiction, Society, Election 2020

But that fact is misleading — especially since the Democratic Party used to be the party of slavery. Andrew Jackson winning the popular vote in 1824 but losing the electoral vote in the House of Representatives was undoubtedly a progressive victory, as Jackson is a president with one of the worst track records on slavery and Native Americans.

When Democrat Samuel Tilden defeated Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote by more than 200,000 votes, but lost in the Electoral College, the Democrats came to a compromise — they would pull federal troops in the South and end Reconstruction, but the more progressive Republicans would hold the executive branch. While that sounds like a terrible compromise, think about what might have happened had Tilden won or had Jackson won. It’s tough to think about hypotheticals, but would the country have been a better place if Democrats won in the 19th century?

If you get rid of the Electoral College, it requires a constitutional amendment. It requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and a two-thirds vote in the House. It requires three-fourths vote of the states. If Trump won 26 out of 50 states, there is no chance Republicans will be on board to overturn an electoral system that favors them any time in the near future. And changing the Electoral College to a popular vote is like changing the sport you’re playing — why would any candidate campaign in rural Ohio or Michigan if the popular vote was all that mattered? If a political candidate wanted to be strategic with their time, why wouldn’t they campaign in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco all the time? According to Jacob Levy, a professor at McGill University:

“The game will not be any longer to be a [politician who is] liberal but be able to appeal to a rural Ohioan…The game will be: Be a liberal — to the extent I can maximize votes in major urban centers.”

Of course, deceptive branding isn’t the answer either. As the Democratic Party grapples with its identity, the dreaded word of compromise is reality — and ideological purity is the dream. I would love and major police reform, universal health care, and not separating children and their parents at the borders too. But are we worried about people agreeing with our slogans, or are we worried about actually strategically passing that legislation?

And the problem now is self-righteousness because it’s clear that the gap isn’t as racial as it used to be. It’s educational — liberals are simply not connecting as they used to with non-college-educated voters. The media might not have a liberal bias explicitly, but an education bias is shown to tilt liberal.

The condescension has gone too far and belittling not only the white working class but the working class of all races. That is shown by the shifting tide of the 2020 election across all demographics. If the Democratic Party still wants to hold onto the claim of being the “party of the people,” then shifting towards being the party of the educated is antithetical to that dream. The answer we should seek, then is not to push center or push left, but do a deep examination of the way we brand and the way we speak. Automatically dismissing and disparaging anyone who disagrees with us makes us feel good about ourselves in our echo chambers, but it’s not winning more voters where it matters. I know a lot of people who agree with me in my city, but those aren’t the opinions that are winning votes where it matters.

In the words of Lisa Lerer at the New York Times: