Since Trump's victory in November we're seeing a big cultural shift happening that didn't happen with his 2016 win. Beauty pageant winners are white blonde women. Fortune 500 companies are ditching DEI programs. Even AOC removed her pronouns from her socials. These aren't mere policy changes. The Left has lost control of the prevailing "national narrative" for the first time in twenty years.
The Left has basically been on the offensive side of politics since Obama's "Audacity of Hope" speech in July 2004. Obama's keynote speech sliced through decades of Democratic malaise just as Americans were beginning to tire of the Bush Administration's heavy handed interventionism in the Middle East and domestic. The speech, given to support presidential candidate John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention, was energetic, optimistic and conciliatory. It didn't sound off on Leftist priorities, make self-aggrandizing claims about the virtues of Progressivism or vilify his Republican opponents. It spoke of making the national fight not about Right versus Left, but about hope versus cynicism, grounded in the commonalities of the American experience regardless of demographics.
While Kerry lost to Bush in 2004, the Left had been galvanized in part by this inspired moment and stormed into power in the 2006 mid-terms. This was the election that catapulted then 66-year-old Nancy Pelosi into congressional leadership, a position she has never left. From then until Trump's recent victory, the Left has controlled the national narrative, essentially setting the parameters for acceptable political discussion and pushing their policy agenda forward with a large degree of success. This was made possible by continued public support as reflected in the polls and elections as much as its increasing influence over major institutions and Fortune 500 companies.
Suddenly, on November 5, 2024, it all came crashing down. To be sure, the Left had been in decline for years. The Progressive apex happened in June 2020 with the death of George Floyd, an event that had millions of Americans-- many of whom who had been largely uninvolved in politics-- out in the streets. But the hysteria over race that came after, along with destruction of major cities, the proliferation of vagrancy and the calls to defund police departments around the country soured most of the country on progressive causes. And thus the recession began, setting the state for Trump's return.
To be sure, 2016 was an important election and Trump had already won the majority of working class votes along with unusually high numbers among minorities and other constituencies that were not exactly traditionally Republican. But 2016 was the set up for a much more significant shift that came in the last few months.
Twenty years ago, Obama had seized the national narrative that had been established by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan's "shining city on a hill" was not only a return to tradition and a rejection of Progressivism; more importantly, it was an affront to Communism and advocated a muscular foreign policy. While Reagan was a wildly popular president and is widely credited with defeating the Soviet Union and winning the Cold War, his Neoconservative advisors ran wild without his wisdom and restraint in the second Bush Administration. Reagan died a hero; his national narrative lived long enough to see itself become the villain in less inspired hands. Reagan's narrative did however also witness its apex under George W. Bush: September 11, 2001 was the ultimate validation of the need for aggression abroad, or at least it seemed so at the time, and in its aftermath Bush saw the highest approval ratings of any president in history.
Go back even further and you can see this play out again, beginning with the rise of the New Deal in 1933 and continuing until the decline of Progressive momentum with the stagflation of the 1970s and the fall of the bitter and contemptuous Jimmy Carter (R.I.P.) to Reagan in 1980 after just a single term in office. It wasn't merely an election loss -- it was a re-alignment of national values. That is exactly what's playing out right now.
This may be good news for Republicans. When you win the presidency, you win it for just four to eight years. When you control the national narrative, you tend to control it for twenty or more. Today's national narrative is put simply: America First. America and Americans before international institutions, "strategic partners," giving away money to non-profits in other countries to push DEI values that nobody wants, America before illegal immigrants, America before Ukraine, before Israel and everyone else.
This narrative is not that different from the "audacity of hope." It is broadly patriotic in spirit, even if the particulars are in fact partisan. Like the 2004 speech, it speaks directly to the middle class, regardless of demographic. It also won over a broader coalition of voters than the Republican party has experienced since 1964, including, promisingly, a wide swath of young voters, particularly young men.
The Left should be particularly concerned about its lack of national-level talent. This is another symptom of a narrative in decline. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg aren't Obama-level leaders. Not even close. And without a doubt Joe Biden is an embarrassment they'd like to forget. There won't be a new narrative on the Left until there is a new superstar. And with how Democrats have been cowed by their recent defeat, that could be a long way off.
