Dems need a “Sister Soulja Moment” to distance from progressive elites
Or keep losing America
Jeffrey Denny
Math this:
Nearly half (48%) of the progressive left have a college degree, per Pew Research. They’re one of the highest educated groups in America.
Americans with college degrees earn up to $1 million more in their lifetimes than those without degrees. They enjoy greater job security, income stability, wealth accumulation, health and wellbeing, and a better life overall.
Only 33% of all Americans have a college degree. Trump’s core base of MAGA voters has even fewer.
All this adds up to the obvious: The progressive left are not like most Americans. They’re more elite, privileged, urban, urbane, and often hilariously out of touch. Not unlike the country club Republicans of old whose president didn’t know the price of milk.
Certainly the progressive left, with its superior, enlightened values, cares deeply about the plight of the working class. Although not so much about white workers that turned to Trump out of resentment. And while progressives lecture about honoring people’s “lived experience” above all, they’re not talking about Trump voters.
But progressives care so much about the workers who cook and deliver their climate-friendly dishes, build their bike lanes and tend their dog parks they’re willing to bite the capitalist hand that fed their privilege and call for its dismemberment.
They’ll self-sacrifically eschew a lucrative yet ghastly late-stage capitalist job to proudly, meaningfully work and raise money from capitalism-enriched donors to fund their Progressive Industrial Complex of tax-exempt advocacy nonprofits. Which often pay more than the typical American makes ($82,500 to $169,588 for advocacy directors in NYC, Zip Recruiter says; U.S. median income is $40,000).
Then they prog-splain to America, which they skunk-eye, how to be more like Europe by offering more free stuff and more regulations from more government funded by more taxes they don’t pay.
Helpful or at least harmless? Maybe. And count me among the wool-dyed liberals who appreciate their care and noblesse oblige. Except when the progressive left tries to guilt-bully Democrats to veer away from the moderate, pragmatic center, declaring their way is the one true way to win America — when the opposite obviously is true. Remember the slam dunk, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you”?
Democrats should have one answer: Bye, Zohran. The New York City mayoral frontrunner Mamdani and his privileged elite progressive ilk are more fatuous than future.
Better yet, Democrats need a “Sister Souljah Moment.”
If you recall, the political tactic to distance from party extremists was pioneered by Bill Clinton, when, as 1992 presidential nominee, he criticized the rapper for declaring, during the LA riots, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”
Was Clinton’s move performative? Perhaps. But any less so than the progressive left playbook of marches, chants, occupations, cancelling and identity-obsessed values-, media- and selfie-preening and purity litmus-testing? Mostly targeting fellow Democrats, since Trump Republicans laugh at and leverage the theater and independents turn away?
Clinton indeed was pilloried by the left for standing up to them. Yet somehow he won two terms, ending a decade of Republican presidents that ended in disaster, and bringing a decade of peace and prosperity (even a balanced federal budget).
Today, if any leading Democrats— if there were any — dared a Sister Souljah Moment, a deadly swarm of puerile puritans would rise up to shame, denounce and force them like cephalophores to carry their martyred severed heads around on a media apology tour, starting on the righteous far-left “Democracy Now!” on PBS.
The grim, hyper-reactive racial sensitivity of the progressive Gotcha Gang— many the comfortable, coddled, entitled class raised by boho bougie Clinton yuppies — doesn’t seem to realize that Tom Wolfe’s depiction of radical chic white savior complex was parody, not a manifesto.
As Pew notes, most progressive left (68%) are white and less racially and ethnically diverse than other Democratic groups, yet “most say U.S. institutions need to be completely rebuilt because of racial bias.” In other words, like in reproaching capitalism, pulling up the drawbridge on their white privilege.
Granted, Pew’s survey was in 2021, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and summer of racial and police reckoning that was as necessary as it was new grist for progressive grievance mill.
But it’s fair to say white guilt, self-loathing and condemnation remain alive and thriving among the Zohranista class as they wonder why the DEI Industrial Complex that went too far tossed a soft pitch across MAGA’s bigoted plate.
The closest top Democrats get to a Sister Souljah Moment today is not very.
But it takes courage to suggest there aren’t 27 genders, that elite college protestors were useful idiots for atrocity-committing terrorists that legally regard women as chattel, or that defunding the police, easing violent crime laws, and ignoring the victims backfired with common-sense Americans.
Just by the numbers, it’s hard to understand why reasonable Democrats are so afraid of the progressive left. While loudly, proudly politically active, they’re only 6% of the American public, 7% of registered voters, and 12% of Democratic voters, Pew tallies.
They also skew young, who vote less than any other age cohort. Youth turnout even dropped in 2024 from 2020 — by omission helping an avowed authoritarian who promised to destroy their agenda and rights trounce the first Black woman nominee and seize the entire government.
Democrats need to stop fumbling around and decide: Pander to the progressive left and keep losing America? Or call them out, reject their demands, trigger their tantrums, and ignore them to demonstrate the party is back in adult hands.
Next: What is the GOP’s “Sister Souljah Moment” to reject Trumpism and save the former “Party of Lincoln”?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
