Jonathan Chait:Tulsi Gabbard and the Return of the Anti-Anti-Trump Left

[MBS]

This phenomenon has been worrying me since 2016, and the fact that this article describes several of my longtime friends to a T does not help me sleep at night.

Tulsi Gabbard has been slowly edging toward leaving the Democratic Party and, it now seems more likely than not, launching a spoiler candidacy to peel disaffected left-wing votes away from the Democrats. Her “present” vote on impeachment, followed by a disavowal of what she called the “zero-sum mind-set the two political parties have trapped America in,” sets the stage for Gabbard to play the role of 2020’s Jill Stein.

Left-wing anti-anti-Trumpism played an important role in the bizarre 2016 outcome. Die-hard Bernie activists, fired up with anger at the release of DNC emails stolen by Russians that purportedly showed the party had rigged the primary, demonstrated against the party outside its convention hall and tried to drown out the speakers inside with boos. Stein attacked Hillary Clinton from the left, then audaciously staged a grift-y fundraising scheme supposedly to hold recounts in the states she had labored to flip to Trump. Trump’s election appeared to deliver the same shock of reality that had vaporized Ralph Nader’s 2000 support.

But Gabbard’s emergence is another indication that the disaffection that drove these events has not disappeared. Anti-anti-Trumpism has maintained a small but durable intellectual infrastructure. The sentiments that first registered as dissent from the Russia investigation transferred to impeachment, and a chorus of left-wing voices is attacking the effort to remove Trump from office as at best a misguided diversion and at worst a deep-state coup.
The anti-anti-Trump left is not a monolithic bloc. It has differing levels of enthusiasm for splintering the progressive vote in general elections, for Trump himself, and for the ethics of explicit alliances with the right. (Some anti-anti-Trump leftists eagerly appear on Fox news and other right-wing media, while others shun it.) What they share, in addition to enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, is a deep skepticism of the Democratic Party’s mobilization against the president. The left’s struggle against the center-left is the axis around which their politics revolves. From that perspective, the Russia scandal and impeachment are unnecessary and even reactionary.

. . . .
What gives the anti-anti-Trump left its emotional impetus is a simmering resentment against the center-left. . . That resentment seems to have created a life of its own, making some leftists tolerant of Trump’s disturbing, obviously corrupt relations with Putin. But what brought them to this strange place is their hatred for the center-left, which blots out any sense of proportion of the danger Trump poses. Pay close attention to this sentence, by Samuel Moyn, especially his use of the operative terms equally and biggest risk: “The Ukraine affair shows that the biggest risk to the American people is that centrists link impeachment to a reinstatement of one set of failed prescriptions, while the right repulses the attempt to oust the president and rules under equally dead-end policies.” The right and the center-left are equally doomed, and the biggest risk is that the Establishment prevails over Trump. Many leftists can imagine a bigger risk than the Establishment neutralizing Trump before he can bring the system down. Yet somehow, the emergency of his growing authoritarianism has not concentrated every mind, and the election of Trump has not dispelled the fantasy that his destruction of the center and the center-left will lead ultimately to a better world.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Waiting for Susan Sarandon to endorse Tulsi Gabbard for President.

[MBS]

2. yup.

[BlueMTexpat]

10. Probably not while

Sanders is still in the running.

[thesquanderer]

3. re: "more likely than not, launching a spoiler candidacy"

I wonder if his source is anything more than his gut.

[turbinetree]

4. Yepper spot on.............................

[BootinUp]

5. Quite plausible. Nt

[eppur_se_muova]

6. The way she's pandering to the Fox News audience and RWNJs, I wonder if she isn't more likely to ...

... peel off some support for 45. Maybe there are enough out there who support the RW agenda -- but are so tired of the Twitterrhea and the buffoonish bloviation -- that they'd rather go for 'Trump Lite'.

[MBS]

9. That would be some consolation. n/t

[UniteFightBack]

7. I take GREAT EXCEPTION to anyone saying the DNC 'rigged' the primary. UMMMMM no they did not.

You want to say they 'rigged' the debate times...fine...but guess what nobody was watching the DEM debates regardless at what time they were on.

I'm also VERY TIRED of people who are not even in the party complaining and bitching about it. I'M SICK of a candidate that YELLS...regardless of the reason.

[SharonClark]

8. Doesn't anti-anti-Trump mean pro-Trump?

Then just say so.

[David__77]

14. I don't think so actually.

One critique that this might be referring to is the idea that focusing on impeachment and Russian-related issues may detract from an effective political fight against the right-wing generally. I’m not sure that that’s what the author is referring to.

[newblewtoo]

11. I found the comments at

the end of the article almost as interesting as the article itself.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tulsi-gabbard-impeachment-trump-russia-2020-election.html#comments

[MBS]

12. thanks!

Indeed they are.

[David__77]

13. There is a mutual "simmering resentment" between different factions.

Thankfully, I suspect that those factions are relatively small (tens of thousands at most nationally) and not really representative of broader constituencies, even if some may be nominally leaders in various capacities.