Our Very Heterodox Prophets of Doom

"Heterodox" commentators may not want Trump to win, but after so many failed predictions of the Democrats' demise, they need him to.

The Democratic Party donkey caught in the apocalypse. Image by DALL-E.

Author’s note: Some of the trends discussed in this piece are sourced in footnotes, as there were too many examples to hyperlink (I gathered more than 100 in total).

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The culture wars of the past decade have produced more than their fair share of casualties and defectors, but as with most wars, the number of refugees has been far greater. As convulsions of grievance, populism, and identity hijacked politics, millions of people drifted away from their respective sides and found one another online. Nobody can quite agree on what to call this band of culture war refugees. For a time they were associated with the now-defunct “intellectual dark web”, though the overlap was never more than partial. I’ve seen them referred to as the dissident or anti-woke left, but not all of their members are — or ever were — on the left. They’re also sometimes called heterodox liberals, though, again, not all of them are liberal in either the American or broader philosophical understanding. They tend to self-identify with non-label labels like “politically homeless” or “tribeless”, but those are misnomers too detached from reality to be taken seriously.¹ For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to them as “heterodox.”

This loose collection of disaffected politicos is a motley crew, but a few common threads hold them together: support for free expression, opposition to authoritarian extremism, and, most of all, antipathy toward both the style and substance of far-left social justice politics. And it is this latter thread that has most informed heterodox commentary and analysis. Indeed, the heterodox crowd has been harping on the theme of “go woke, go broke” for the past eight years. Time and again, they warn of an impending reckoning where the far left’s radicalism redounds to the complete ruin of the Democratic Party. Only, this day of judgment never seems to come, an inconvenient fact that has forced heterodox writers into a state of cognitive dissonance. With the 2024 elections on the horizon, Joe Biden’s flagging approval numbers now have them more invested in this narrative than ever. They may not necessarily want Donald Trump to win, but after nearly a decade spent crying wolf about the Democrats’ demise and bleeding credibility, the heterodox commentariat needs him to.

The beginnings of what would later solidify into this heterodox camp started in 2014, a watershed year memorably dubbed the “Great Awokening” by Matthew Yglesias. The chatter in those early days was little more than a subset of Obama voters reacting with dumbfounded horror as one progressive space after the next abandoned liberalism for intersectionality and critical theory. It wasn’t until the 2016 election of Donald Trump, which only a handful of heterodox (or non-heterodox) commentators saw coming², that the “social justice will destroy the left” narrative ramped up.

In the years since, this narrative has developed and branched into its own political theology. On social media and podcasts, and in the pages of heterodox publications such as The Free Press, Unherd, Spiked Online, Quillette, and Persuasion, among others, commentators churn out a relentless drumbeat of political realignment.³ Concomitant with these seismic shifts, we are told that the Democrats are hemorrhaging voters⁴, especially working class⁵ and minority voters⁶, and that Trump and/or the Republican Party have become some kind of working-class heroes.⁷ In 2020, these pundits warned of terrible danger ahead for the Dems at the ballot box.⁸ By 2022, they were predicting a “red wave.”⁹

Of course, this foretold day of reckoning has yet to materialize. As I covered in 2022 and again in 2023, the evidence for a political realignment or any kind of mass voter migration has been greatly exaggerated. The Democrats beat the GOP in the 2018 midterms, and again in 2020. Nor was there any red wave in 2022. Now in 2024, these prognosticators are writing the Democrats’ obituaries in advance with the desperation of a gambler down to their last few chips.¹⁰

Very few heterodox folks have expressed a desire to see Trump back in the White House. And yet, their reputations now depend in part on a sweeping Republican victory. A prophet who predicts the end of the world may not necessarily wish to see the Mighty Hand and Outstretched Arm wipe the earthly slate clean, but once they get into the doomsaying business, they can only get the apocalypse wrong so many times before their flocks move on. Unlike their theological brethren, however, these political doomsday cults have no Kool-Aid to drink nor any comet to catch. There will be no face-saving mass suicide. What the heterodox camp desperately needs is the sweet respite of a W after racking up Ls for the past eight years. If Trump doesn’t finally vindicate them come November, they run the risk of becoming the political equivalent of Harold Camping, the American radio evangelist and laughingstock who predicted the end of the world four times between 1988 and 2011.

One of the inaccuracies baked into much of heterodox political analysis is the presumption that “the far left” and “the Democratic Party” are these tightly connected or even interchangeable groups of people. This is born partly of a simple misreading of the landscape, and partly out of a desire to see the far left suffer some kind of public and definitive rebuke for their outrageous antics. Since most social justice warriors, and the institutions they have captured, are neither breaking laws nor susceptible to being voted out by the citizenry, the Democratic Party, who can be electorally defeated, has become the proxy and scapegoat for all that is wrong with the far left. In a way, the heterodox punditry has taken to kicking the dog — or rather, the donkey.

The problem is, unlike the GOP, which now represents and resembles the far right more closely than at any point in history, the Democratic Party, deeply flawed though it may be, is not a comparable facsimile of its own extremists, who remain in the minority. Donald Trump has led the Republicans for nearly a decade, during which time the party has systematically purged its moderates or brought them into the MAGA fold. The Democrats have changed as well over this period, but not nearly to the same degree. The loudest voices on the far right sound nearly indistinguishable from Republican politicians. Meanwhile, blue-haired leftists and keffiyeh-clad protestors call the Democratic president “Genocide Joe.” Ignore this incongruity at your reputation’s peril.

Of course, there’s a real possibility that Trump and the GOP could win in November. Joe Biden looks and sounds every one of his 900 years, and his approval on leading issues such as immigration and inflation are low. Plus, given the rather humiliating fact that Republicans have won the presidential popular vote only once since 1988, they certainly seem due. I have both argued that the Democrats should replace Biden, and also laid out a plausible path for a Biden victory. In the months since, the polls have tightened to within the margin of error. Much can change between now and election day, just as we saw in 2022, and new developments, the likes of which we can’t even imagine, can spring up seemingly out of nowhere.

The problem with being a non-pollster in the forecasting game is that your credibility becomes untethered from your arguments, insights, analysis, or style and reduces to a simple correct/incorrect binary. A true prediction provides long prestige coattails that can be ridden for years, even amid the most colossal imbecility, and long after one’s crystal ball has been revealed to be a broken clock. We saw this with Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who correctly guessed that Trump would win in 2016 and spent the next seven years being taken seriously as a political commentator despite making what scientists refer to as “no damn sense.”¹¹ The consequences are less pronounced if you make the wrong call, but make too many in a row, and you become Paul Krugman, the economist who once proclaimed that the Internet’s impact on the world economy would be no greater than the fax machine’s, as well as many other doozies.

Maybe the heterodox punditry will finally get their long-awaited vindication come November. Maybe Trump will win decisively in both the electoral college and popular vote, and the GOP will steamroll through down-ballot races. Or maybe Biden and the Dems will win. Or perhaps, as polling currently suggests, it will be another close race decided by the thinnest of margins, with a victor who enjoys no mandate and a victory that proves no foretold political annihilation. Either way, the lesson here isn’t to avoid prognosticating, but rather to avoid becoming so emotionally invested that a single prediction morphs into a grand narrative that defines a huge aspect of your work. We all have our opinions, and there’s nothing wrong with bold predictions, but nobody wants to be the guy taking out 5,000 billboards to advertise the end of the world.

See also: “The Great Realignment That Still Isn't Happening”

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1. The idea that these folks are “politically homeless” is nonsense. Sure, they don’t feel represented by either the Democratic or Republican Parties, but the same is true of a plurality of Americans! The heterodox have this in common with most libertarians, anarchists, socialists, classical liberals, moderate conservatives, Georgists, integralists, and “sovereign citizens.” And like all of these other cohorts, heterodox people have political homes in the form of social networks, peer groups, organizations, online communities, and media publications where like-minded voices speak and like-minded people gather and associate. Every once in a blue moon, you’ll run into one of those very rare people who truly are politically homeless, and the interactions are nearly as uncomfortable and unnerving as those with the physically homeless. We’re 20 years into the era of Rule 34 at this point. If you can’t find at least a few thousand people on the Internet who share your tastes and sensibilities, you’re probably further out there than Voyager 1.

2. Notably, Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibbi

https://legalinsurrection.com/2016/11/andrew-sullivan-calls-trump-fascist-but-predicts-hell-win/ 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/05/andrew-sullivan-thinks-donald-trump-may-defeat-hillary-clinton.html  

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/11/andrew-sullivan-trump-america-and-the-abyss.html  

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html  

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-162952/

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1324849221661560834

3. https://www.thefp.com/p/the-great-scramble

https://www.racket.news/p/campaign-2024-not-left-versus-right

https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-realignment

https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1768644349447864587

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/04/why-the-right-is-eating-the-lefts-lunch/

https://unherd.com/newsroom/biden-embracing-populism-elections-around-corner/

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1332801414205202433

4. https://www.thefp.com/p/why-lifelong-democrats-in-oregon

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-rise-of-the-desantis-democrats

https://www.thefp.com/p/revenge-of-the-covid-moms

https://www.racket.news/p/the-war-party-tantrum

https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-reckoning-is-coming-for-the-democrats

https://unherd.com/newsroom/biden-michigan-2024-troubling-news/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/across-americas-cities-voters-are-driving-out-progressives/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/donald-trumps-popularity-soars-among-gen-z/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/is-tulsi-gabbard-going-to-endorse-donald-trump/

5. https://www.thefp.com/p/sohrab-ahmari-white-rural-rage

https://www.thefp.com/p/what-happened-last-night-in-virginia

https://www.compactmag.com/article/a-working-class-party-without-a-working-class-agenda/  

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-class-war-inside-the-democratic-party/  

https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1778519942981455911  

https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1766918158323995019  

https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1323700574014132226 

https://www.racket.news/p/which-is-the-real-working-class-party-cc3

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1699928800224567298  

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1745869188756029546

https://x.com/lwoodhouse/status/1615859438883340288  

https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-democrats-have-a-self-delusion

https://x.com/lwoodhouse/status/1580045202143662080  

https://unherd.com/2024/02/centrist-mccarthyism-is-taking-hold/

6. https://www.thefp.com/p/asian-american-political-candidates-go-maga

https://www.thefp.com/p/clinton-democrats-lost-elite-liberals

https://www.thefp.com/p/latinos-are-flocking-to-evangelical

https://www.thefp.com/p/hispanic-immigrants-angry-nyc-migrant-crisis

https://www.thefp.com/p/chicago-migrant-crisis-trump-2024

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1583314376252981249  

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1538959404300505089  

https://www.city-journal.org/article/when-demography-isnt-destiny  

https://x.com/lwoodhouse/status/1593271990072115202  

https://www.persuasion.community/p/youre-thinking-about-polarization

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/12/29/the-left-doesnt-own-minority-voters/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-democrats-deserve-to-lose-the-hispanic-vote/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/are-democrats-giving-up-on-hispanic-voters/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/ny-times-trump-support-among-black-voters-grows-nearly-500/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/why-latinos-love-trump/  

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1721679429657637101   

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1699922290912153877  

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1546504631638974465

7. https://www.thefp.com/p/republican-voter-gop-trump-working-class

https://www.thefp.com/p/working-class-americans-second-class-citizens

https://www.thefp.com/p/can-the-gop-become-the-party-of-the

https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-rank-and-file-teamsters-love-trump/  

https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1764396285740634523  

https://www.racket.news/p/democrats-have-abandoned-civil-liberties

https://www.compactmag.com/article/trump-can-win-the-union-vote-in-2024/

https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/up-for-grabs

8. https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1227424146122067970

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1227626000017756160

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/taibbi-trump-2020-be-very-afraid-872299/  

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/donald-trump-2020-election-758840/  

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1660306333231398915  

https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/05/glenn-greenwald-democrats-freaking-out-strategy-jesse-watters/  

https://x.com/wesyang/status/1305526342805577732  

https://x.com/sullydish/status/1214230971786178560  

https://x.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1321204881596755970  

https://x.com/walterkirn/status/1322995184490209285  

https://unherd.com/2020/06/how-covid-19-could-help-donald-trump-in-november/ 

9. https://www.thefp.com/p/who-do-voters-hate-more-a-midterm

https://www.racket.news/p/episode-12-america-this-week-with#details

https://www.racket.news/p/the-democrats-education-lunacies

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1528403031968055298  

https://x.com/galexybrane/status/1589427989569495040  

https://x.com/galexybrane/status/1554982510693453824  

https://www.compactmag.com/article/masks-and-lockdowns-are-here-for-good/  

https://x.com/SohrabAhmari/status/1534940085954691072  

https://x.com/lwoodhouse/status/1507814719280672769  

https://x.com/lwoodhouse/status/1496721041573376000  

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/10/27/americas-crime-wave-is-not-a-right-wing-myth/  

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/23/the-coming-bloodbath-of-the-democrats/

10. https://www.thefp.com/p/donald-trump-again-the-question-is-why

https://www.thefp.com/p/stumbling-white-house-2024-biden-trump

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-backlash-in-deep-blue-america

https://www.racket.news/p/colorado-ruling-makes-trump-a-frontrunner

https://www.racket.news/p/donald-trump-americas-comic

https://www.racket.news/p/is-the-electoral-fix-already-in

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1746262778602774912

https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-the-left-is-losing-a-winnable-election/  

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/americas/north-america/us/2024/03/donald-trump-bloodbath-affair  

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/03/demonising-rural-voters-defeat-the-democrats-biden  

https://x.com/wesyang/status/1772309448360423932  

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/17/2024-will-be-the-latino-election/

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-second-coming-of-donald-trump-39c

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-to-re-elect-donald-trump-189

https://x.com/mtracey/status/1760019265334169742  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-democrats-are-finally-talking-about-crime-but-is-it-too-late/  

https://unherd.com/newsroom/is-joe-biden-losing-pennsylvania/

11. A racism scandal imploded Adams’s reputation in 2023, but a seven-year run as a political commentator on the strength of a single correctly called coin flip ain’t too shabby.