The Party of Smug – Truthdig

For people gifted with the basic human emotional process known as empathy, President Joe Biden’s December pardon of disgraced Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan was a cause for outrage. Conahan had spent years engaged in a cash-for-kids scheme that incarcerated juveniles in exchange for prison-industry kickbacks, in the process destroying the lives of hundreds of children and their families. Most people expressed frustration and anger at the decision by one of the nation’s historical proponents of brutal incarceration to include Conahan in his lame duck pardons. 

“The issue with the pardon of Michael Conahan has nothing to do with him being in prison, because he was already out,” one criminal justice reform advocate said on social media. “The issue is that Biden commuted the sentences of only 1500 people (which isn’t even a dent) and one of those was a judge who made money by incarcerating children.”

Then there was the reaction of the kind of liberals who are always alert for an opportunity to punch left. Bay Area activist Armand Domalewski took to X to sneer that the commutation amounted to just desserts for prison abolitionists. The reaction fit a pattern of smarm; just days before, he had used Jordan Neely’s death to swipe at the New York Civil Liberties Union for its advocacy in favor of rehabilitation over incarceration. Where most people saw in Daniel Penny an example of a far right vigilante murdering a man who had been left behind by the state, Domalewski — a self-described “Yimby for Harris” — saw the opportunity to settle some scores on the cheap.

Sadly, Domalewski is not an outlier. Since the election, a number of angry Democrats and liberals have engaged in similar axe grinding. Nor is the political urge toward callous smuggery and sneering anything new on the center-left. Part of the Democratic Party for decades, it has become a signature defense mechanism in the wake of electoral losses. After George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004, Democrats began arguing for blue states seceding from the U.S. and joining Canada or striking out on their own. 

Seen from today, that seems mild compared to the rage that followed Hillary Clinton’s loss 12 years later, typified by the mean-spirited buffoonery of Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, who wrote at the time, “Be happy for coal miners losing their health insurance. They’re getting exactly what they voted for.” That impulse hasn’t waned; after last November’s election results, Pardon the Insurrection podcaster Derek Knight tweeted, “Just realized how bad of an idea tariffs are? Sorry, but I’m glad you’re getting exactly what you voted for. You deserve it.” At the Atlantic, in the immediate wake of the election, Tom Nichols grimly crowed that “Those voters expect that Trump will hurt others and not them. They will likely be unpleasantly surprised, much as they were in Trump’s first term.” David Pakman, a D-tier liberal YouTuber, was more forthright. While liberals had “tried reasoning with” Trump voters, it didn’t work. “You signed up for this,” Pakman said. “You said, give me another four years. Now you’re going to get it whether you understood it or not.”

The contradictory belief that voters who backed Trump are too stupid to understand what they voted for, but nevertheless deserve pain, is not unrelated to the Democratic Party’s image problem with a growing number of working-class voters. One of the central complaints about Democrats and liberals that comes up again and again in polling and in anecdotal reports is the sense that their ranks are full of hypocrites who claim to care about the struggles of their fellow Americans, but when they vote the wrong way, or even just live in the wrong states, they are to blame for their own misfortune. It’s an elitist view of the public that sounds patronizing at best and snobbish at worst. Why didn’t you people listen to your betters?

The alternative to this deflection approach is figuring out why voters rejected what Democrats were selling. This is a process that takes not just empathy, but self-awareness and humility. It’s more than a choice between two competing visions of politics, it’s an opportunity for a reset. But that’s not how the party sees it. 

After the election, Biden welcomed a slate of sycophantic media influencers to the White House that seemed tailored to reward loyalty more than a desire to expand the tent. The aforementioned Pakman was there, as was Kenneth Walden, an influencer whose oeuvre appears to be primarily referring to progressive women in misogynistic, hateful language and wishing death on the party’s left wing. The message sent by the gathering was clear: business as usual. 

This isn’t a strategy with staying power, because as cathartic as online hissy fits may be, serves-you-right liberalism helps explain why formerly reliable Democrats stayed home in large enough numbers to swing the 2024 election; Kamala Harris dropped 6 million votes from Biden’s 2020 numbers, while Trump improved by 3 million. 

The solution is not to continue punching down and left, or tolerating voices that lead the charge. Instead of attacking potential allies like left-leaning criminal justice reform advocates in Pennsylvania, the party should be practicing outreach to the voters they lost while keeping the base they have. Doing otherwise suggests that the goal is not to win elections at all. The Republicans don’t do this kind of snobbery, and their message — full of lies and hate though it may be — resonates the better for it. 

Harris ran the campaign that party leaders wanted. It flattered moderate pundits and centrist online commentators, aimed at conservatives and took left support for granted. After this strategy cost them another winnable election, Democrats are faced with a familiar simple question: Should we try to figure out what went wrong, change things and face the next election cycle with an invigorated party? Or should we stay the course, blame benighted voters and take perverse joy in their misery? No prize for guessing the answer.