WILL THE CRAZY LEFT RE-ELECT TRUMP?
Donald Trump is a lucky man. First he got to run for president against an almost unbelievably bad candidate, Hillary Clinton, who couldn’t win despite having the FBI and CIA laboring on her behalf. Now it appears that he will run for re-election against the nominee of a party wholly in thrall to its most extreme and juvenile elements.
The New York Post headlines a piece by Mary Kay Linge: “Why young, left-wing radicals could help re-elect President Trump.” Linge notes a new book by Robby Soave of Reason.com, Panic Attack: Young Radicals In the Age of Trump:
Angry and anguished over Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, the Zillennials — leftist millennial and Generation Z activists — continue to fuel the anti-Trump resistance.And they just might get him re-elected in 2020.That’s because their ideology of intersectionality, and its full-frontal attack on moderation and compromise in American politics, “is a gift to Trump and those who continue to support him,” writes Robby Soave….
Today’s young radicals, like those of the 1960s, are openly anti-American. The difference is that the radicals of decades ago didn’t seriously think they could win a national election. Another difference is that today’s young radicals are crazy.
“[Intersectionalisty is] a tyranny of the most victimized,” Soave said. “The more categories of oppression you can claim, the more authority you have.”It also spells trouble for every one of the Democrats’ 24 declared candidates, because the very qualities that could allow them to appeal to a broad swath of voters in the general election make a politician anathema to the intersectional left.
Relatively mainstream Democratic candidates like Joe Biden and Kirsten Gillibrand are falling over themselves trying to talk the intersectional language of 2019, but doing so only exposes them to ridicule. Meanwhile, the craziness marches on:
A willingness to tolerate those with differing views, once seen as a positive good in all corners of American society, is condemned by the Zillennial left. Many of the activists Soave interviewed believe that speech that offends them should be — or already is — illegal.
Juvenile leftists have largely managed to suppress free speech on college campuses, which, as has truly been said, are islands of repression in a sea of freedom. But they will not have such easy sailing when they try to impose their bizarre ideologies on the world at large.
[D]espite their widening influence, Zillennial activists are not a majority within the millennial and Gen Z cohorts.“In fact, it’s striking how few they are but how large the effect they are having on our cultural and political dialogue,” Soave said. “They are very good at making it seem like they speak for everyone; very good at representing their demands as universal.“They are a radical fringe, but they’re getting their way with their ability to control the conversation.”
Do they control the conversation? Only if you assume that the conversation takes place primarily on Twitter and in the pages of the New York Times. But these are vanishingly small slices of the real conversations that go on in the context of a presidential election.
And if Zillennials can’t get the candidate they want? They may not turn out to vote at all. “Biden and other moderate Dems’ … lack of progressive bona fides make them just another sad symptom of everything that’s wrong with the world,” Soave said. “Most Democratic candidates are seen as “not so much better than Trump that it’s worth the effort.”In other words, Zillennials would rather risk a second Trump term than compromise the intersectional principles they hold so dear.
Of course, as already pointed out, there aren’t actually that many Zillenials. So will their staying home throw the election to President Trump? No, but what more likely will happen is that all of the Democratic candidates will be pushed into such silly positions by the ignorant left that whoever wins the nomination will be repudiated by the voters.
As I have said before, I think the jury verdict against Oberlin College shows what normal people think of “intersectionality” when they encounter it. My guess is that fewer than 10% of Americans have any idea what “intersectionality” refers to. But when they find out that it means that you can’t arrest a shoplifter because he is black, and it is not just acceptable but commendable for the shoplifter and his confederates to assault the guy who caught them for the same reason, they will be unhappy. And most will vote against anyone who is associated with such unjust and unAmerican principles.
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