And the core point of that movement, its essential point, is that liberalism is no longer enough.

An interesting juxtaposition of two left leaning liberals, Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan.  Both are sort of stirred by the same issue but in different ways.  The issue is the Democratic Party as the progenitor of the culture wars owing to their sharp lurch to the left.  I think both pieces miss a lot of important issues but what is most striking is their differing perspectives.

Kevin Drum is on the left and so solidly supportive of the Democratic Party as to be an active partisan.  His article, If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals by Kevin Drum, is not a philosophical or moral condemnation of the lurch leftwards by the Democratic Party.  He is quantifying the issue and arguing that the lurch is likely to cause the Party problems.  He acknowledges that he approves the move leftwards.

On Thursday I posted a series of charts that all documented a similar theme: Since roughly the year 2000, according to survey data, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on most hot button social issues while Republicans have moved only slightly right.

This wasn't meant to be a rigorous scholarly analysis. And you can argue about margins of error, question wording, choice of topics, and so forth. Still, the gaps are too big and the trend too consistent to ignore the obvious conclusion that over the past two decades Democrats have moved left far more than Republicans have moved right:

Click to enlarge.

I've made this point many times before, and I want to make it again more loudly and more plainly today. It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn't come as a surprise: Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004—and they've succeeded.

Now, I'm personally happy about most of this. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that "personally happy" means nothing in politics. What matters is what the median voter feels, and Democrats have been moving further and further away from the median voter for years: 

Click to enlarge.

I've added a scale of 0-10 to these charts to make them easier to interpret. As you can see, in 1994 the average Democrat was at 5 and the average Republican was at 6. In 2004, that had changed slightly: the average Democrat was at 4 and the average Republican was just under 5. In other words, both parties had gotten a little bit more liberal.

But by 2017 that had changed completely. The average Democrat was at 2 while the average Republican was at 6.5. In other words, between 1994 and 2017, Democrats had gotten three points more liberal while Republicans had gotten about half a point more conservative.

That takes us up to 2017, by which time Democrats were quite obviously farther from the median voter than they had been in 1994 or 2004. And it showed: Our election victory in 2020 was razor thin even though (a) the economy sucked, (b) we were in the middle of a pandemic, (c) voters had had four years to see just what Donald Trump was really like, and (d) our candidate was bland, amiable, white, male Joe Biden. This should scare the hell out of liberals.

What is interesting, to me, is that he repeatedly declares his comfort with moving towards socialism and racism and state control, etc.  He is a party member simply arguing for the survival and effectiveness of the party.  It is as if he doesn't care about the ideology or the morality.

Andrew Sullivan is also a man firmly of the left.  From What Happened To You? The radicalization of the American elite against liberalism by Andrew Sullivan.  Yes, he is probably largely congruent with the Democratic Party but he is first and foremost a classical liberal of Age of Enlightenment values.  I.e. those values which are championed by Classical Liberal conservatives.  

Sullivan is being mobbed by the authoritarian, statist Critical Race Theory/Social Justice Theory marxist ideologues and condemned for his Age of Enlightenment values.  He claims his positions have not changed - it is the Democratic Party and its enforcers who have moved to the authoritarian left.  He cites Drum's research.

“What happened to you?”

It’s a question I get a lot on Twitter. “When did you become so far right?” “Why have you become a white supremacist, transphobic, misogynistic eugenicist?” Or, of course: “See! I told you who he really was! Just take the hood off, Sully!” It’s trolling, mainly. And it’s a weapon for some in the elite to wield against others in the kind of emotional blackmail spiral that was first pioneered on elite college campuses. But it’s worth answering, a year after I was booted from New York Magazine for my unacceptable politics. Because it seems to me that the dynamic should really be the other way round.

The real question is: what happened to you?

The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so. And, yes, some of the liberal critiques of a Fox News hyped campaign are well taken. Is this a wedge issue for the GOP? Of course it is. Are they using the term “critical race theory” as a cynical, marketing boogeyman? Of course they are. Are some dog whistles involved? A few. Are crude bans on public servants’ speech dangerous? Absolutely. Do many of the alarmists know who Derrick Bell was? Of course not. 

But does that mean there isn’t a real issue here? Of course it doesn’t.

Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting — reacting against something that is right in front of our noses?

What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.

We all know it’s happened. The elites, increasingly sequestered within one political party and one media monoculture, educated by colleges and private schools that have become hermetically sealed against any non-left dissent, have had a “social justice reckoning” these past few years. And they have been ideologically transformed, with countless cascading consequences. 

Take it from a NYT woke star, Kara Swisher, who celebrated this week that “the country’s social justice movement is reshaping how we talk about, well, everything.” She’s right — and certainly about the NYT and all mainstream journalism.

This is the media hub of the “social justice movement.” And the core point of that movement, its essential point, is that liberalism is no longer enough. Not just not enough, but itself a means to perpetuate “white supremacy,” designed to oppress, harm and terrorize minorities and women, and in dire need of dismantling. That’s a huge deal. And it explains a lot.

Sullivan has found what conservatives have seen for a long time, that the CRAT/SJT movement is incompatible with Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberalism.  It is a racist, coercive, authoritarian movement more interested in ideological purity than in contesting or winning democratic elections.  They ultimately are focused on seizing power by whatever means necessary.

Sullivan and the big tent conservatives tend to both be advocates of Age of Enlightenment values as well as Classical Liberalism.  They are in the same contest against the authoritarians.  Sullivan is struggling to see this.  Drum has embraced party above philosophical values.  

Or at least, that is how I am interpreting what is going on.