What a Difference a Year Makes

As the calendars changed over from 2023 into 2024, three little-discussed trends seemed ascendant. On the left, the Biden administration and the nonprofit-industrial complex led by a “WEIRD” elite pursued a liberal-progressive remaking of the whole of society best named “Everything Leftism.” On the right, the response was incoherent as the Republican Party debated its presidential nomination and conservative intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals engaged in brutal “right fights.”

But between then and now, what felt like a whole decade’s worth of things happened. The nonprofit-industrial complex was torn apart by the elevation of Palestinian nationalism to the central focus of activist Everything Leftism. The Biden administration slouched to low approval ratings as President Joe Biden demonstrated a complete lack of physical and mental fitness for another four-year mandate. Republicans and conservatives rallied to support their improbable nominee, especially after his improbable escape from death in an assassination attempt. The country learned what it was like to be unburdened by what has been in the “brat summer,” whatever that was. And the Republicans’ improbable nominee, former President Donald Trump, won the presidential “popular vote” by coopting the groups who were supposed to constitute an “emerging democratic majority.”

So where does that leave the WEIRD elite, Everything Leftism, and the right fights (and right-fighters)?

The Counter-Elite’s Opportunity

The WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) elite struggled to understand the Biden administration’s unpopularity—after all, 84 percent of the rich, highly and selectively educated, and densely urban populations that Scott Rasmussen and Committee to Unleash Prosperity characterized as the American elite one percent approved of President Joe Biden’s job performance. And following a brief panic over Biden’s mental incapacity induced by the June 2024 presidential debate in which he looked very bad against former President Donald Trump, the elite promoted the new “brat summer” vibes of the new Democratic presidential ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and the man’s man that was Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). They even wore camouflage hats.

For these elites, the Biden administration had been a boon. The Inflation Reduction Act and Biden administration regulatory regime were massive expansions of climate-change regulations that these voters endorse. These voters reported that their economic situation was improving. The Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine-and-mask-mandate regime was a blow struck against the American culture the WEIRD elite considered to provide “too much freedom.” Union leaders, praised by almost eight in ten of the WEIRD elite, had more influence in the halls of power than they had since George Meany walked the earth.

But the very polling that revealed the elite’s desire to be “ridin’ with Biden” also showed them to be completely out of alignment with the national mood. On November 5, the consequences of that dis-alignment were made apparent when voters elected a Republican Congress and 312 Republican presidential electors to affirm the second election of President Donald Trump.

The incoming second Trump administration will put the “counter-elite” on the hot seat, with real responsibility for government. If Trump’s appointees and the public advocates supporting them reject the “normal” “law-abiding, upwardly mobile, middle-class culture” their boss was elected to restore, Trump’s return-term will not avoid the pitfalls that befell Grover Cleveland’s ill-starred return-term. If they can restore the normality that Joe Biden and the WEIRD elite failed to restore (or willfully refused to restore), the counter-elite could remake American society and government.

Everything Leftism Hits a Wall

The Biden administration made “Everything Leftism,” the ideological fuel of today’s political left, official government policy through “whole of government” initiatives that would create “whole of society” change toward the will of the woke hive mind consisting of academia, Big Philanthropy, Big Labor, and the left wing of corporate America. But the Everything Leftist dynamic revealed its weakness when activists tried to turn its Eye of Sauron toward affirming Palestinian nationalism.

If the activists’ immediate goal was to coerce Democrats to adopt their preferred approach of isolating, if not outright boycotting, divesting from, and sanctioning, Israel, they failed. They did receive the concession of the non-nomination of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) as Vice President Harris’s running mate, but after the Harris-Walz ticket lost these activists received a share of blame for that decision. The militancy of the Palestinian nationalist movement (well documented by my colleague Ryan Mauro) further turned off the general public.

But Everything Leftism could not even deliver the constituency most committed to Palestinian nationalism, because Everything Leftism also promoted the political interests of a faction of extremely hawkish ex-Republicans led by former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. As Cheney campaigned with Vice President Harris and the frequently Big Philanthropy-funded remnants of the 2016 “never Trump” sentiment vociferously supported the Democratic ticket top-to-bottom, former President Trump went to southeast Michigan to campaign for Muslim voters and sent campaign materials promoting his desire to negotiate lasting peace. Trump carried Michigan while receiving substantial support from Arab American enclaves.

Following the election, the left-wing circular firing squad turned on “The Groups,” constituency advocacy groups that purport to speak for the liberal electorate in a manner that just so happens to align with elite-liberal, especially Big Philanthropy, sentiment. Michael Lind, an economic-class-first leftist in an age of identity-first Everything Leftism, offered advice to his fellow progressives on Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast: “If all of the leaders of these various communities are career nonprofit people or academics funded by the Ford Foundation and other big grantors, they’re AstroTurf.”

Right Fights in the Cabinet Room?

The “grill dad Republican” chose Donald Trump to lead his political movement, and then the electorate chose former President Trump to once again lead the country. That means the conservative-Republican DC intellectual class will spend much of the next four years fighting each other over the spoils of Trump’s victory, seeking patronage and power.

President Trump’s second administration will be influenced by a number of factors and factions, of which right fighters might not be the most important. Dissident ex-Democrats, like the civil libertarian former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and the former environmentalist campaigner and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been nominated for Cabinet posts. Leftist institutions like the Teamsters Union that did not even endorse President Trump’s election were given the opportunity to keep Bidenomics alive with their own Cabinet selection of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary.

For their parts, the signers of the National Conservative and Freedom Conservative manifestos will both have representation in the coming administration. Combative national conservative Michael Anton was named to a senior State Department post. Kevin Hassett, an academic economist and freedom conservative who held economic policy roles in the first Trump administration, will be returning to government as chair of the National Economic Council. Russ Vought, a national conservative with wide cross-factional respect, was nominated to again serve as head of the Office of Management and Budget, a role he held in the first Trump administration.

But as President-elect Trump, a canny operator with a particular eye for patronage management throughout his political career, juggles his various coalition factions, expect the right fights to continue. Whether they will follow the freedom/national divide of the Biden interregnum (especially now that the faction of “freedom conservatives” who are paid to be “never Trump” are in many ways functionally liberals) remains to be seen.

Conclusion

As 2025 begins, the world of 2023 is no more. The 2024 elections have reshaped Washington. The brutal logic of warfare has reshaped the Middle East. The realities of future energy needs are turning “net zero” dreams into green-tax nightmares.

Will the counter-elite blow its opportunity? The election of a Republican trifecta has the institutional WEIRD elite on the outs, and President Trump has nominated prominent critics of the institutional elite like Jay Bhattacharya, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth to senior postings. If their government delivers success, the counter-elite will be rewarded; if it loses the Mandate of Heaven, the WEIRD elite and all its radicalism will return with a vengeance.

Everything Leftism, despite all the complaints liberals are directing at The Groups, will remain—its institutional structure is too strong. The Big Philanthropies of dead men—the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation—answer to no one except their increasingly radical boards and staffs. The foundations of the living—Alex and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Mackenzie Scott’s Yield Giving, and Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund—are deeply committed to advancing Everything Leftism. The question is what shape it will take.

And the right fights? They go on as well, but with the potential for direct impact on public policy, subject to the mercurial whims and savvy coalition management of the once-again boss of the federal executive branch. How well President Trump can manage his various factions and how well those factions commit to restoring normal American life will likely define the success or failure of his second administration.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/what-a-difference-a-year-makes/