What Is the Point of Politics without ideology?

The last few months have seen the Democrats scramble to justify their very existence. Over and over, they have caved in to the demands of an administration that is determined to move very fast, break things, and openly defy whatever we might now define as the law of the land.

In all this chaos, it has become clear that the public is wearying of the same old politics. Bernie Saunders has launched what he and AOC are calling the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.” I will be writing about why it should simply be called the “Oligarchy Tour,” since neither politician shows any real commitment to actually ending the status quo: They are merely extending and excusing it, and slapping a cute mask on the ghoulish spectre of the party they represent (please don’t make me laugh about his “independence”). In last year’s election, Kamala Harris raised $1.65 billion, Donald Trump raised about $1.09 billlion, and she still lost. It turns out that, despite such an enormous sum of money, her campaign slid into debt. As Nathan J. Robinson puts it in Current Affairs, we have to ask, “How much of the Harris campaign was a scam?” Yet, Harris has the temerity to send out feelers for another run in politics. As I’ve said in “Kamala Harris and the Art of Losing,” this is not a serious politician: her entire career has been about getting into office simply to get into office, and her only ambition has been to make it up the political ladder. She should simply retire to a quiet life, devoted to brunches and attending musicals.

But hark! We now hear that there might be a younger, more dynamic, emerging leader in a party dominated by a geriatric crowd whose members barely register the presence of the internet. The New York Times reports that the 25-year-old David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting, “Plots to Take Down Party Incumbents.” Well, la-di-dah, wonders this reader, is it possible that someone in this moribund party is developing, what do we call it, an actual politics? What, we ask, is he planning to do? What fantastic new vision of a just world shall we see unfurled? A determined call to end an ongoing genocide? Free college? An end to student loans? Healthcare for all? An end to the vicious, public kidnappings? One’s skin positively prickles in excitement, I tell you. The sight of his visage in the accompanying photo shows a tawny young man, with hair that could gain easily gain multiple endorsement deals, a clenched and sculpted jaw, and lips pursed together in a way that says, “I mean business.” The image is cropped, but we can tell from his shoulders that he might be standing with his arms akimbo, like Superman letting the big baddies know he means business.

But, alas: a close reading of the report reveals no such plans. Hogg, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (the purpose of which escapes everyone’s comprehension these days) is president of an organisation he founded, “Leaders We Deserve,” and his stupendous, world-changing plan is to “intervene in primaries in solidly Democratic districts as part of a $20 million effort to elect younger leaders and to encourage a more combative posture against President Trump.”

Wait, what now? This is Monty Pythonesque, and it sounds like, “We shall form a committee to investigate a process whereby we can begin to look into setting up a Tribunal Of Inquiry in order to determine how, and if, we should move forward.”

Who, at this current moment in time, needs persuading of the necessity of a “more combative posture” against Trump? Trump himself sometimes seems to be doing that work, with a philosophy of “Move fast, break things, oh, crap, never mind, go back to the beginning,” when it comes to matters like tariffs and rehiring fired workers. Everywhere, people are turning on their lawmakers in anger and demanding answers, even on matters that might not seem to affect them directly. Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, recently faced a furious audience of constituents who wanted to know what he is doing to bring back Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, an El Salvador native who became a resident of Maryland, a man they do not have to care about. I could go on with several other examples, but it is becoming plain that there is a shift in the national mood, and it’s not really any longer about people identifying as Democrats or Republicans but voicing their anger at a larger system that is failing people.

Hogg, meanwhile, is setting himself up as a brave young radical, claiming that he will face opposition from within his own party.

Opposition to what?

Hogg also thinks that Nancy Pelosi, who has helped to steer the party towards its current state of do-nothingness, who once declared that everything, including Medicare and Social Security “was on the table,” should be re-elected. Where is the change, exactly? In a social media post from three years ago, Hogg declared himself “too radical” for politics, and that he’d like to be a kingmaker, not a king. Yes, well, Pelosi is exactly that, a kingmaker, and here we are.

One problem for Hogg is that, unlike in 2017, things are moving fast and there is a palpable sense that people are learning that the old ways have got to go. There is not yet a real, coherent opposition to the status quo, but when a Republican’s constituents in a midwestern state are yelling, “I’m pissed!” about someone whose situation should, technically, mean nothing to them, we know that something is afoot. As for Hogg’s grand plans: there’s no ideology there, just a vague bit of grandstanding. Sure, he has said he is for gun laws, healthcare for all, and free college, but there is scant evidence that he thinks all of this is tied to a political agenda: it’s all a cynical move to elect people into office. Kamala Harris has never been anything but a politician who wanted to be elected—she was willing to consort with the likes of Liz Cheney, Barry Diller, and Mark Cuban, powerful and rich people whose interests lie in maintaining the status quo and tax benefits of the very privileged. Nancy Pelosi is not exactly a person of the people. What Hogg wants to do, it seems (and I would love to be wrong) is simply move people around. But millions everywhere are tired of the Democrats as a whole, and will demand more.

What is the point of politics without ideology? Hogg is not a leftist, as far as I can tell, but he’s also not even a pallid liberal: he’s just the status quo in a younger body and he may be surprised to find that he is in fact too much to the right in swiftly changing times (be kind to me, dear reader: I hold eternal hope in my heart that we are moving to the left, slow as molasses, but in that direction). To be fair to Hogg, even the supposed left in this country has given up on core beliefs, allowing issues like immigration and abortion to be taken over by liberals and the right. As I’ve asked elsewhere, “What does an election yield if the left has already surrendered its core, when it’s too terrified to speak of its ideology?”

We don’t need new people in old positions of power where they will simply say whatever needs to be said to get elected. We need an entirely new system: we need people with actual, ideological beliefs. We must believe in something world-changing, or watch everything sink into nothingness.

For more on the necessity of ideology, see my “A Manifesto.”