Columnist and editor Jonathan Alter recently went on rightwing television show ‘Morning Joe’ to chastise his party, the Democratic Party, for supposedly alienating parents. According to Alter, who adopted the reactionary framing of fights for equality, racial justice, and critical thinking, Democrats need to stop it with all the “Woke B.S.”
When podcaster Chris Richards quoted Alter and critiqued him for it on Twitter, the journalist did not like it. He also didn’t seem to like it when I also took to Twitter and called him an embarrassment to the city of Chicago and the Francis W. Parker school we both hail from.
“Don't tell me what I mean! It's essential to teach all kids about our often ugly history. And when Trumpsters try to bully progressives and teachers, they must be forcefully resisted. But to let the GOP become the party of parents would be suicidal,” Alter wrote, ostensibly speaking of the Democrats’ electoral prospects should they not follow his advice.
First, though certainly not most importantly, Alter is punching above his weight class in trying to provide national parties with electoral strategy advice. He has no pertinent experience winning national elections.
So, he’s just another underqualified White guy giving unsolicited advice in that regard. More noteworthy to me, however, is the callous way Alter is adopting the conservative framing of families & culture.
By flippantly using "woke" as an insult, Alter is doing his part to erase the essential Black liberation movement that produced the term. “Woke” has historically been an important watchword in American Black revolutionary traditions.
So, any non Black person dismissing it derisively is racist, period. They're mocking Black American intellectualism, activism, and fights for survival.
Even if we didn't care about that, there's simply no evidence for Alter’s argument.
All main leftists positions in the US right now - from nationalized healthcare , defunding our prison complex , cutting down the war complex , saving the earth, taking back our money from Billion dollar corporations, have widespread support among people of all parties, as well as among independents.
Now, let's say for the sake of argument that all of that wasn’t true - that those weren't popular ideas. They're still the moral ones, and so we should fight for them.
A guy like Alter posits himself an elections expert even though he has no pertinent experience winning them but his analysis is also entirely devoid of a consideration of what is right and what is wrong. If you win but were fighting for what's wrong, it's not an important victory.
We as leftists care about morality, and because most people do, our ideas have widespread support. Jonathan Alter’s ideas do not.
His approach to politics - that liberals should just impersonate conservatives because they're afraid of Republican talking points, is what saw the Democratic Party lose support in states they used to do do well in. It's a part of what depresses turnout in areas Democrats need to turn out and that used to turn out for them, but where more and more voters are staying home because liberals keep running their own racist, war-criminal, job-destroyers.
Jonathan Alter cited Terry Mcauliffe’s recent failed campaign for Virginia Governor as an example of wrong-headed, parent-alienating Woke-ism. In fact, Mcauliffe largely ran on the stuff Alter wanted him to, after a career of supporting it, and he still lost.
Democrats continue to increase earth-destroying carbon emissions, hold Latin children in concentration camps, torture, overturn democracy abroad, oppose universal healthcare, and housing, while letting billion dollar corporations steal our money. So, I don’t root for them to succeed in elections.
However, if the Democratic Party wants to improve their electoral outcomes, while doing some good instead of all the harm they currently do, perhaps they should consider starting to support the popular Leftist ideas voters tell them they want instead of criticizing them by using the same bigoted language Republicans do.