Rick Wilson’s interview with Harry Litman is just one example of the wrong-headed analyses of Kamala Harris’s loss that have been making the rounds since the 2024 election. For the most part, Rick Wilson blames progressives for 2024. At 21:42 in the video, Litman asks Wilson what the focus should be for rebuilding the Democratic Party. Wilson answers:
Stop looking over your left shoulder at the progressives because what have they proven to you this year? They don’t f**king care if you win or lose. They don’t care if you win or lose. All the garbage they put this party through and Harris through about Gaza, and the decisive number of democrats who voted for Jill Stein in Michigan because of Gaza..
Wilson is probably correct about Jill Stein’s part in Harris’s loss. He is not the first to call this out. His claim is based on his organization’s model. The model shows that progressive and Arab Democrats made up enough of he vote that killed her (Harris) in Michigan. Then he continues:
If these people, if the democratic party doesn’t realize that the progressives are not their ally, that they are a competing party inside their party, just like the Republican Party didn’t realize that MAGA was going to consume them…
I disagree with this comparison, as I explain below.
Wilson Says AOC Will Tweet Mean Things About Him
Wilson laments that he’ll get a lot of sh*t from progressives, and AOC will tweet mean things about him. He insists that he is a practical politics guy, not an ideologue or a pie in the sky whatever. He believes in victory and if you don’t have victory against Donald Trump and his allies in the 2026 cycle, goodbye, it’s over. They [the Democrats?] need to go at the throat [of progressives?] all the time. “There’s no more ‘my honorable friend’ in the house or Senate. They need to go to war every single day to stop every Trump appointee.”
Then Wilson goes to his focus on the trans issue. He cites the Trump campaign ads based on Harris’s past support for trans-friendly policies. Wilson doesn’t blame this on the Democratic Party. They were in fear of the left flank. Democrats have to overcome this fear.
He insists that he’s not telling the Democrats to become Republican light. He’s telling them to be more like Bill Clinton, who won by being a non-traditional Democrat. Or Barack Obama, who ‘came across like a country club Republican’. Wilson’s anti-progressive wish list for the Democratic Party includes things like ditch the radical talk, the progressive fantasy world. Stop thinking you have to go out and campaign to talk to workers about industrial policy and solar panel jobs. Start talking to them where they live (which he implies is not in the trans world). This harangue against progressivism, or against Wilson’s definition of progressivism, continues until 26:31.
Wilson’s Progressivism is a Straw Man
It seems obvious that when Rick Wilson blames progressives for 2024, he’s not talking about progressives at all. He’s talking about the progressive fantasy world. And the progressive fantasy world is his own creation. Furthermore, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are not the way forward as he suggests. They are part of the Democratic Party’s past. Furthermore, they lost this election. In recommending them to Democrats, Wilson reveals his irrelevance to both Democrats and progressives.
The Progressive Response
Much of what I’ve written since 2016 assumes readers remember the exhilaration of calling out the madness in the Middle East and then discovering Bernie Sanders. I probably should have written about that process in the lead up to this election.
We suddenly saw that it was time for a new direction. If this sounds overly ambitious, there was reason to believe that our leaders saw it too. Their foreign policy had been a spectacular failure, Libya being the most recent example before Gaza. And there were going to be repercussions that no one seemed concerned about.
The Importance of Food Systems
Bombs and white phosphorus were destroying food systems and farmland. Land and water resources and housing were in danger, while the global population was larger that it had ever been. By 2050, the population would reach 9 billion. We declared that it was time to stop the destruction. It was time to prepare for coming generations.
This agenda implied self-sacrifice on the part of progressives, but it had an enthusiastic following. I would argue that it was the blossoming of new life in the electorate. But the Democrats chose to cling to their failed worldview. Or perhaps they were clinging to the worldview of their donors. The blindness and arrogance were breathtaking.
Progressives are the Loyal Opposition
However, progressives are nothing like MAGA. We voted for Hillary in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2024, I urged progressives to vote for Kamala. Then came 2024. We were told Biden was pressured to drop out of the race because of his health. His policy platform was not part of the discussion.
However, Harris was consistently asked whether she would continue Biden’s policies. Questions about her policy proposals began to grow.
This is strange, given the fact that Bernie’s candidacy had been scuttled by Barack Obama. He decided it would be Biden instead of Bernie. We voted for Joe Biden to keep Trump out. And then Biden surprised us by cooperating with the progressives. My point is that we had no reason to think we could hold Harris over a barrel policy-wise. The salient points were that she was young and healthy and not Trump.
There was also the problem of Gaza. It is a problem. Voters, especially Arab voters, hated Joe Biden for his part in the genocide. Therefore…what? Don’t vote? Vote for Trump? It was a hard decision. However, progressives are not necessarily to blame. Gaza caused everyone anguish in one way or another. How could it not affect the way they vote? No voter should have to weigh the suffering of Gaza when they cast their vote. But that’s what they had to do.
The Democratic Establishment Fought Progressives. The trans-rights issue came from them, not us.
In 2016, the Democratic Establishment was thunderstruck that anyone would criticize their policies. They apparently thought everything was going well. Instead of accepting progressive criticism, they fought it tooth and nail. They fought our candidate too. It was almost embarrassing how openly they went to war against Bernie Sanders.
We knew very little about Bernie back then. As it happened, his focus was not food and water security or foreign policy. It was more about elevating the domestic working class and alleviating wealth and income inequality. For progressives on the other hand, food and water security was tied to foreign policy. It was an internationalist outlook from the beginning. We knew that we can never be secure when so much of the world is in turmoil and so many people lack basic necessities. And this state of affairs was being driven by US foreign policy.
If we had analyzed our differences with Bernie, we would have supported him anyway. Compared to the neocons and Conservatives, Bernie was like rain in the desert. However, we did have one thing in common with Bernie: none of us was even thinking about the trans issue or same-sex marriage.
The Indiscriminate and Undiscriminating World of Alternative Media
The term ‘woke’ appeared quite early in our conversation. I don’t know where it came from. I would guess that the woman who first uttered it was a manifestation of establishment (probably Democratic) consultation.
From the Republican side, a fear campaign was launched against the term ‘social justice’. I once used this term in reference to Bernie’s agenda. I didn’t realize it had negative connotations from the World War II era. But during World War II, this term was not used by the Democratic Party–progressive or otherwise. It was associated with Father Charles Coughlin, an American right-wing supporter of Adolf Hitler. Of course the Republicans didn’t mention that in 2016.
Leading up to the 2016 election, YouTube pundits began encouraging progressives to vote for either Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein. I objected in their video comments and on my blog. I said that telling young voters to choose between two candidates is not a strategy. But they continued.
Jill Stein has been lauded consistently over the last decade by Chris Hedges. Hedges appears to be a progressive but he always seems to be working against the Democratic Party.
Trans Rights
No one has ever explained to me how same-sex marriage and trans rights are progressive. At least not in the sense of 21st century progressivism. Our focus is the survival of the human race, which is threatened by war and unsustainable agricultural systems. We’re not just promoting the survival of the human race. We are in search of a fulfilling and productive existence for everyone.
But the celebration of same-sex marriage and trans rights seemed to appear on the scene as part of a full-scale blitz. Certain ‘progressive’ YouTube pundits suddenly appeared with over ten thousand followers and they immediately joined in the celebration.
We support policies that fight discrimination. This includes discrimination against same-sex couples and trans people. But same-sex marriage and trans rights do not take precedence over survival in the progressive agenda.
The 2024 Election
When Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Gaza in spite of Americans’ warnings and objections, I predicted that he would continue to pound the people of Gaza until the election. And that’s what he did. Today everyone agrees that Israel’s behavior hurt Joe Biden’s chances in the 2024 election. Of course it did. It was meant to hurt Biden. Netanyahu wanted Trump to win the election.
The voters were herded like cattle on market day. That’s how Trump won the presidency. and it didn’t happen in a media vacuum. Influencers on YouTube and in Michigan pushed the strategy of punishing Biden in the election. It was obvious to most people that helping Trump get elected would not be good for Gaza, but the influencers continued anyway. These influencers included Benjamin Netanyahu, Chris Hedges and Jill Stein.
It’s not the first time voters have been herded. However if Trump has his way, it will be the last time. No elections, no voters. I could lecture you that strategic thinking and voting is important in a democracy. However, even if a majority of Americans could be influenced by such arguments I would be closing the barn door after the cows got out.