The New White Moderate: Liberalism, Political Coercion, and the Failed Electoral Strategy

(Illustration by Nat Thomas/St. Louis Public Radio)

By Joshua Briond

There’s a Jacobin article circling around titled, “Where Do We Go After Last Night’s Defeat?”  published a day after Bernie Sanders’ defeat on March 11th, 2020. The author writes, “the bad news is that the Democratic Party isn’t going anywhere. The good news is that today’s common-sense political demands are, almost unthinkably, democratic socialist ones.” The overarching theme of the article is that the almost undefeatable nature of the Democratic Establishment, in an historical context, is not a reason to move beyond bourgeois politics, but rather justification for being reluctant to look outside of the realm of the two-party system for solutions to our current reality. According to the author, this argument is supported by the fact that the Sanders’ movement, or rather moment, has won the “battle of ideas,” as if that’s something worthy of boasting. As if winning the “battle of ideas” within this arena has ever fed an empty stomach or liberated anyone. The article displays a lack of understanding of what socialism entails, far beyond mild liberal reforms, further proving Sanders’ moment has widely led to a miseducation of socialist ideals. In the end, the author provides the perfect encapsulation of self-congratulatory American chauvinism, symbolism, and unearned arrogance, largely present on all sides of the electoral political spectrum.

To begin, the article credits what is referred to as “five years of “Sandersism” for the “genuine leap forward in politics in the United States, a leap that dwarfs the past half-century of liberal stupidity and backwardness,” unknowingly and unapologetically depicting the vast disconnect present between Sanders’ moment (electoral canvassing) and colonized people (and our organizing and movement efforts). Which precisely demonstrates why national electoral canvassing, specifically as it relates to bourgeois elections, cannot be categorized as “working-class” organizing or movements when it is systematically disconnected from, and neglects the, most marginalized among us. For example, the article takes a braggadocious tone to make a note about how “in five years, we’ve moved forward fifty,” entirely neglecting to mention how state political repression and mass media’s anti-communist smearing following Black radical movements and uprisings in the last 60 years or so affected the political psyche of millions of people. And also how movements and moments, such as Black Lives Matter, #NoDAPL, and others, took place within the last five years and were instrumental in the shift in public discourse and moving politicians, including Bernie Sanders, further left (even if only performatively), with regard to racial and economic justice and state violence. 

The article, in true social-democrat fashion, reeks of liberal idealism and exceptionalism while complacently lecturing us on how our material reality is bad, but not so bad that we can’t endure our continued social and political subjugation with patience while waiting to vote for the next seemingly progressive politician(s) during the next election cycle. There is no emphasis on the local grassroots organizing (beyond campaigning among the electorate) that is already being done by non-white people who receive little-to-no support from the white moderates masquerading as “allies” and “progressives,” who chronically neglect organizers until it’s time to convince us to vote for their preferred candidate. The author tells us we should “reject” the “fantasy that now is the time we all throw ourselves into third-party work or militant protest activity” and that “there is nowhere for us to go.” Which prompts a question: who is this “us” he speaks of? C.L.R. James once wrote, “What Negro, particularly below the Mason-Dixon line, believes that the bourgeois state is a state above all classes, serving the needs of all the people? They may not formulate their belief in Marxist terms, but their experience drives them to reject this shibboleth [principle] of bourgeois democracy.” The entire article reflects an approach that is not only a product of a widespread culture that lacks political imagination beyond liberal idealizations but has not intellectually or politically struggled with persons of the Black race before, at least not ones who are poor. The author is clearly not from the same hue as the colonized and oppressed people, in desperate material need of far more than even what his beloved Democratic Party is willing to offer, on their best day. But what’s fascinating is just how confident the author is throughout the entirety of the piece with his shit-eating and ramming the politics of electoralism down our throats. And all of this despite the disappointing losses by the most popular progressive politician in the US in back-to-back elections to morally and politically inferior candidates. I pondered on the possibility that maybe this article wasn’t written for me, or us, as in non-white people—but its “colorblind” and race-neutral approach clearly depicts otherwise. However, even the worst of what the white-American community has to offer is undeserving of such a disturbingly bleak and imperious political outlook. 

In his famous letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes about the white moderate who will constantly say, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action" and who “paternalistically feels [he] can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a more convenient season." And I ask, how is this descriptor laid out by the late great MLK, regarding the white moderate in the 1960s, any different than the rhetoric displayed by liberal reformists masquerading as “leftists” in the article? By telling us we need to remain patient for the US political stratosphere to miraculously adopt a conscience and allow moderate and largely temporary reforms through the electoral approach and the Democratic establishment. This is telling the most oppressed people that you can paternalistically set the timetable for our liberation.

The author writes that there are 12 million members of the Democratic Party, the largest membership number of all parties in the US—as a means of emphasizing an unfounded and irrelevant point about the American people’s reliance on the party—while failing to connect the dots to the lack of alternative political options being presented for people to resort to, which leads to a coerced “support” for millions of people who consistently “vote blue.” The author deliberately fails to recognize that the US has a population of over 300 million, and it doesn’t take a mathematician to understand that there are millions upon millions of people who are not members of the establishment and/or simply do not vote—due to disenfranchisement, socio-political status, and/or strategic disinvestment. Millions of people, largely made up of the colonized and/or racialized, who are disinvested and have long rejected the two-party system and are desperately looking for an alternative to their current social, political, and economic material realities. Instead of defeatism under the guise of electoral hopefulness within the Democratic Party, we should be proving to them that socialism, beyond the electoral and welfare statist approach that Bernie offers, could serve as that alternative. 

We, in America, never truly “choose” our political representatives—the ruling class does—even with the largely performative and symbolic facade of allowing some of us to cast votes every couple of years. Sure, we’re granted the opportunity to emblematically “choose” our next plantation owner or subjector-in-chief, but only after having our beliefs filtered and heavily influenced by the stranglehold that mainstream media, or rather mass propaganda machine, has on our psyche. With that, the electoral college stands as a means of allowing ruling elites to have the last say of who they want as their figurehead of empire run by corporations—oftentimes regardless of the popular-vote results. This, along with the fact that we’re constantly forced to choose between possibly slightly improving our material reality and the continued brutalization of those in third-world and global-south countries. It’s nothing more than constant political coercion. A democracy is not just being “allowed” to “choose” your representatives but having representatives that actually politically and morally align with its peoples’ material interests, with a fighting shot to win. If we can understand this illegitimate process and American hypocrisy, as the often “transporter” of democracy, we have to understand how the game is rigged from the jump—and we end up losing every time regardless of who is occupying office, as the ones with the most power and influence are oligarchs and corporations, and their financial interests. So how can you, as a self-proclaimed leftist, progressive, or radical, advocate for the continued reliance on a system that is inherently rigged against us? 

The fact of the matter is: Bernie Sanders is losing. And unless something drastic happens in the coming weeks, he will not be the democratic nominee. The electoral strategy has proved, once again, to be largely ineffective as a legitimate threat to capitalist exploitation and imperialism. So, you would think the most obvious solution would be to align ourselves with organizers, movements, and ideologies that can bring about the radical shift that marginalized people need to survive, right? But no, the new white moderates, leeching onto a party that has proven time and time again that those of us who want something radically different than milquetoast neoliberal establishment candidates and politics, are not welcomed. And honestly, it’s about time we listen. This conception asserted by the author, that somehow “we’ll get ‘em next time,” despite not offering much of a historical context or substantial answer as to why we should be optimistic about this approach or how we could achieve such a thing, is not just politically naive but downright potentially fatal—especially as we approach pending human-induced climate doom and deteriorating material conditions. It’s leading people into a burning building indiscriminately with little care for the lives that’ll be harmed and/or lost, in the meantime. 

Bernie Sanders should be seen as the compromise candidate that he truly represents. A physical embodiment of capitalism’s last hope, the “peaceful” alternative to sustain capitalism, imperialism, and pending climate doom, beyond its life expectancy and to avoid addressing the actualities of what this country is, at its roots, for a couple years longer. Instead, it’s clear that these self-proclaimed “progressive” political figures are considered end-goal saviors to many of these white moderates who claim that the Bernie Sanders’ or Elizabeth Warren’s of the world are merely a means to an end. And, as we’ve seen time and time again, their work will be finished if and when they succeed in electing them to the most powerful office in the world. If the DNC will not accept the mild reforms that Bernie Sanders is offering then that should tell us all we need to know about the reality in which these gains will not be attained through the ballot.

The new white moderate bombards us with disingenuous questions such as, “what’s your solution then?” when they encounter those of us who do not vote, as if opting not to engage in the coercive nature of lesser evils every election cycle, or refusing to vote for and electing the next terrorist-in-chief, is somehow more morally repugnant than the contrary. As if divesting from national electoral politics and not electing imperialists who are sure to enact terror on colonized people globally isn’t a substantial alternative, in and of itself. The new white moderate is desperately clinging on to the glimmer of hope that the Democratic Party and the United States of America, in their entirety, are not beyond redemption. They constantly tell themselves this because believing in the contrary would force them to reckon with not only their sense of identity, which they’ll find is inextricable with Americanism, but also with the reality that everything they think they know about their beloved country, and all of its institutions and global affairs, is categorically false. The claims implied in the article, that the Democratic Party is just simply incompetent, are not true. But minimizing their structural issues to something like incompetence largely lets their existence as a for-profit-over-all-else political party off the hook for its crimes while implying that these issues can be fixed with a slight overhaul in leadership. Democrats heavily rely on the lesser-of-two-evils approach that we see every election cycle. It is all they know and is very much deliberate; it’s not incompetence. As the author notes, they are perfectly fine with masquerading as the “opposition” party to Republicans, even in the Donald Trump regime era—while resisting little-to-none of their fascist policies or acts—as long as it means disallowing even the most mildest of reforms that could potentially come from a Bernie Sanders presidency. 

White moderates are no longer just raging, traditional centrists intent on maintaining the capitalist, white-supremacist status quo, but instead are also self-proclaimed “progressives” and “leftists” telling colonized, racialized, and oppressed people to wait our turn to begin building something revolutionary, something bigger than us all, while they continue underperforming and flat-out losing their electoral strategies. These new white moderates, masquerading as “progressives,” “leftists,” and oftentimes even “radicals,'' are very much keen on allowing the US—with their beloved Democratic Party at the forefront—to maintain its status as the unjust global police of the world, as long as they’re reaping the benefits of such a position through minimal “domestic” progress through welfare statism. And this is why they can so easily advocate for the continued dependence on the liberal establishment. With a condescending smugness, the author writes: “And, of course, there will be some wacky proposals that promise us a shortcut to power. Sectarians will encourage everyone to funnel their rage into ill-fated third-party efforts, and some will demand an insurrection at the Democratic National Convention.” But what’s more “wacky” or “ill-fated” than proposing to reconcile oneself to age-old tactics that are bound to continue to fail—with little-to-no evidence that a different outcome is even remotely possible? What is more doomed than sitting on your hands while people continue dying, and allowing the rage derived from the disappointing defeat of the most well-known progressive politician since FDR to funnel into more electoral opportunities coming along in the future instead of taking said rage and strategically and politically putting it toward building a sustainable movement toward people power, on the ground and in the streets? This failed electoral strategy, while disguised as being optimistic and pragmatic, is nothing more than a politically-naive and deliberately-obtuse attempt at preserving the dead end that is the Democratic Party, an organization that has historically served as a hindrance to radical movements because of its subservience to capital. It justifies futility. Because god forbid we do something beyond gathering signatures, door knocking, and bar-hopping between book clubs.