Extremes Meet

The MAGA right (I started calling it the "far right" but when it makes up maybe 30-40% of the voting public, how "far" is that?) is almost always absurdly wrong.

But part of the reason that what should be an easy Presidential race in 2024 is because the left can fall into some troubling traps:

* A congenital inability to acknowledge good news in the economy. If the stock market is doing well, who cares about the well being of rich stockholders? If wages are up, who cares because prices are high (even if wages are rising faster than inflation). If unemployment is low, there must be other measures of it that aren't as good. The economy is extremely healthy right now, and while indeed, there are inequalities in the American economy and we have lots of billionaires, this is still a good thing for everyone, even the "bottom 30%."

* The patently false assertion that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Yes, at the national level, there is gridlock, and until that ends only bipartisan policies can be adopted. But there is a huge difference between the parties and is shows up in state policy, in regulations, in foreign policy, in appointments including judicial appointments, and in the budgets and legislative efforts that do get proposed. This nihilism plays into the hands of people who oppose everything that they believe in and are trying to make the world worse.

* The failure to recognize that Israel is not just a puppet whom the U.S. President controls. The U.S. has some influence over Israel as a long time and important ally that provides it with a variety of kinds of aid that have helped it prevent its utter annihilation at the hands of hostile regional neighbors. But it has its own internal politics that are firmly in control of its policies.

* Allowing the best to be the enemy of the good. The standard against change should be measured is whether it makes the status quo better, not whether it is perfect in a utopian sense. In a democracy with divided control, perfect is rarely an option.

* An unwillingness to recognize that the lesser of two evils is the best that any democracy can offer. I didn't support Biden in the primaries in 2020 and argued strenuously that he wasn't the best choice. He won that election by less than a percentage point in the marginal state, and we can't know how other candidates would have done. I strongly favored having Biden not run again and leave the democrats with an open race to choose someone new. That didn't happen either. But that doesn't mean that Biden isn't profoundly better than Trump. Biden isn't a felon. Biden doesn't lie every time he opens his mouth. Biden understands how the government and the world work. Biden isn't openly hateful. Biden isn't trying to speed up climate change. Biden isn't coddling the rich to nearly the same extent.

* The false belief that essentially all sources of reliable information are corrupt and can't be trusted.

Politics is the art of the possible. Too many on the left don't recognize that and don't recognize that they don't have the political support necessary to make their vision happen overnight.

There are also select policy issues where left wing sentiment is well-intentioned but misguided:

* Opposition to nuclear power. It is cleaner and safer the opponents realize and the waste disposal issues are political rather than technical in nature.

* Opposition to marriage by minors, even when those minors are already in a relationship with someone and have children with them. In countries where there is no divorce or where minors are pushed into relationships that are imposed upon them this is a real problem. But the U.S. has no-fault divorce, and marriage empowers wives, rather than weakening them, by giving them more rights.

* Opposition to corporations when the real concern is with some other economic reality that really has nothing to do with the corporate form.

* Support for local businesses and independent businesses, when often those businesses are sometimes less efficient, and meet people's needs less well.

* Support for local family farms, when our very way of life is made possible by long distance trade in food stuffs and agricultural products, and when small family farms are an order of magnitude or two less productive per acre than larger farms. These farms are also often highly polluting and less safe.

* Support for AMTRAK even though it is mostly a dinosaur that is getting in the way of progress and needs absurdly high subsidies on most of its routes because the quality of the service it provides is so poor.

* The false belief that standardized tests are more racially biased and social class biased than other forms of evaluating students seeking to go to college.

* Afro-centrists who believe that, historically, Egyptians and the Moors were mostly sub-Saharan African in appearance.