London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Sep 16, 2025

Why Liberals Pretend They Have No Power

Why Liberals Pretend They Have No Power

Elite politicians invoke the rhetoric of national emergency only to behave like hapless passengers trapped aboard a sinking ship.
At a press conference in September, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fielded questions about the perilous backdrop to November’s election. Denouncing Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he be defeated, Pelosi was unequivocal: “You are not in North Korea; you are not in Turkey … You are in the United States of America. It is a democracy, so why don’t you just try for a moment to honor your oath of office to the Constitution of the United States?” Only moments later, Pelosi dismissed calls that she leverage her role as speaker to shut down the U.S. government in an effort to block Trump’s incoming nominee for the Supreme Court.

The contrast between the two comments was stark. The first conveyed a sense of emergency, gravely implying (not without cause) that the very foundations of America’s democratic and constitutional order were in danger. The second, particularly if we accept that premise, amounted to nothing less than an abdication of responsibility from one of the country’s most powerful figures during a moment of national crisis.

A sitting president openly flouting the rules of democracy represents a serious enough threat on its own; if the prospect of a Supreme Court appointment weeks before an election whose outcome could well be decided by that very body is not an appropriate moment for vigorous opposition, then what is?

This tension underscores a deeper paradox of liberalism that has arguably reached its apex in the Trump era. Since the president’s election four years ago, the political and intellectual leaders of America’s supposedly reform-minded opposition have issued warnings about the existential threat that Trump poses to democracy.

Amid it all, senior Democrats have mostly maintained both the regular operation of government and a standard of congressional etiquette that connotes normalcy more than it does any state of exception: applauding the president’s speeches, approving his military budgets, awarding him new domestic spying powers, and even fast-tracking his judicial nominees. A line from one 2019 CNBC report detailing the overwhelming House approval of Trump’s marquee NAFTA renegotiation sums up the absurdity of this posture: “Democrats also wanted to show they can work with Trump only a day after they voted to make him the third president impeached in American history.”

Determined opposition to Trump has sometimes been so nonexistent that Democratic partisans have had to invent it, as when an image of Pelosi during the 2019 State of the Union address went viral on the entirely spurious grounds that the speaker had intended for her clapping to look sarcastic.

Liberalism in the Trump era has thus become a kind of strange pantomime act in which elite politicians deploy the rhetoric of imminent threats and national emergency only to behave like hapless passengers trapped aboard a sinking ship. Although it has certainly found its most potent expression in Washington, this posture of feigned powerlessness has gradually come to infect the broader culture and ideology of American liberalism as a whole.

Even in solidly blue states where Democrats face none of the institutional impediments that confront them in Washington, D.C., robust progressive legislative agendas are rare.

Powerful figures such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and California Governor Gavin Newsom issue bulletins about climate change that read more like desperate pleas from activists than statements by sitting governors with the power to make and alter laws. (In response to the recent wildfires raging across the West Coast, Newsom announced that he has “no time for climate-change deniers,” despite having approved some 48 new fracking permits since April. Cuomo tweeted, “This is what climate change looks like.

The proof is right in front of us. This is a national emergency-it’s now or never.”) The Democratic Party’s 2020 nominee for president, meanwhile, is a former vice president who pledges to reform corporate America through “non-legislative” means and proudly champions the idea that “nothing fundamental” needs to change. On issues as varied as the environment, racial oppression, and immigrant rights, the culture of liberalism has rarely been so suffused with a language of moral urgency and social justice; as an institutional and ideological presence in American life, its politics has rarely been so unambitious or shy of confrontation.

The contradictory posturing of today’s most powerful liberals is not fully attributable to the shock and disorientation brought about by the 2016 election; its roots go back to the Clinton era at least-the period (not incidentally) when Democratic leaders formally abandoned their commitment to the New Deal and absorbed key parts of a Republican agenda.

American liberalism has always had a technocratic streak, but the disappointments experienced by liberals since the end of the 1960s enabled a new generation of more conservative Democrats to restructure the liberal coalition and redefine both its style and its political priorities. In the past few decades, the party has avoided embracing a clearly defined progressive program or engaging in the politics of confrontation. Whereas the consensus put in place by Franklin D. Roosevelt was achieved through open conflict with powerful forces in American society, the lodestars of the new liberalism became compromise and conciliation with the right.

While FDR forged a lasting political settlement around welfarism and an activist state against the wishes of much of America’s corporate establishment, the Clinton administration would famously denounce the scourge of “Big Government” and declare “the end of welfare as we know it.” The Bill Clinton adviser Dick Morris even summed up the administration’s strategy in a memo as follows: “Fast-forward the Gingrich agenda.”

Accordingly, key parts of the conservative agenda were absorbed into American liberalism, which would now make a virtue out of both bipartisan compromise and ideological triangulation.

This style found its ultimate expression in Barack Obama, who masterfully paired a sonorous rhetoric of optimism with, to paraphrase the political scientist Corey Robin, a “moral minimalism” that rendered Democrats not so much unprepared for a fight with their Republican foes as indisposed to the very idea of one.

Beginning with the hopeful cadence of “Yes we can!” and ending, after a slew of congressional defeats, with the election of Donald Trump, the Obama era has served to convince many liberals of the need to compromise even further-anything remotely ambitious being doomed to fail on the altars of conservative partisanship and Republican obstruction. (Rampant opposition to Medicare for All from centrist Democrats despite its considerable popularity has been justified on these grounds for years.)

Partly in response to the limitations of Obama-era liberalism, the left (notably, though not exclusively, in Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns) has embraced something like an inverse strategy: mobilizing around ambitious, popular policies and openly naming the forces and interests that stand in their way.

The standard rejoinder is that the American left is detached from the political realities of a system that makes changing anything exceptionally difficult. On short-term pragmatic grounds, this argument obviously has a certain force: Pelosi can’t single-handedly stop the president from behaving dangerously in advance of November’s election any more than Newsom or Cuomo can arrest the progress of climate change.

Democrats might grind the federal government to a halt to prevent Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, only to find themselves outflanked by Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But until such an effort is actually mounted, we will never know what it might achieve. The same logic applies in the longer term to popular policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

It’s all well and good to recognize the structural constraints imposed by America’s political system, and the difficulty of passing major reforms in the face of organized opposition. But for too many of America’s leading liberal politicians, “realism” has become an identity unto itself, unmoored from any programmatic orientation toward the future or sustained effort to bring about significant change.

Transformation on the scale necessary to undo the ravages of the Trump presidency will certainly be difficult to achieve, the fight for larger objectives such as health-care reform and a green industrial revolution harder still. But given what the leaders of 21st-century liberalism themselves tell us about the state of things, what is the alternative? There’s no reason to surrender when you can fight.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
Tens of Thousands of Young Chinese Get Up Every Morning and Go to Work Where They Do Nothing
The New Life of Novak Djokovic
The German Owner of Politico Mathias Döpfner Eyes Further U.S. Media Expansion After Axel Springer Restructuring
Suspect Arrested: Utah Man in Custody for Charlie Kirk’s Fatal Shooting
In a politically motivated trial: Bolsonaro Sentenced to 27 Years for Plotting Coup After 2022 Defeat
German police raid AfD lawmaker’s offices in inquiry over Chinese payments
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Volkswagen launches aggressive strategy to fend off Chinese challenge in Europe’s EV market
ChatGPT CEO signals policy to alert authorities over suicidal youth after teen’s death
The British legal mafia hit back: Banksy mural of judge beating protester is scrubbed from London court
Surpassing Musk: Larry Ellison becomes the richest man in the world
Embarrassment for Starmer: He fired the ambassador photographed on Epstein’s 'pedophile island'
Manhunt after 'skilled sniper' shot Charlie Kirk. Footage: Suspect running on rooftop during panic
Effective Protest Results: Nepal’s Prime Minister Resigns as Youth-Led Unrest Shakes the Nation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
King Charles and Prince Harry Share First In-Person Moment in 19 Months
Starmer Establishes Economic ‘Budget Board’ to Centralise Policy and Rebuild Business Trust
France Erupts in Mass ‘Block Everything’ Protests on New PM’s First Day
Poland Shoots Down Russian Drones in Airspace Violation During Ukraine Attack
Brazilian police say ex-President Bolsonaro had planned to flee to Argentina seeking asylum
Trinidad Leader Applauds U.S. Naval Strike and Advocates Forceful Action Against Traffickers
Kim Jong Un Oversees Final Test of New High-Thrust Solid-Fuel Rocket Engine
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Macron Appoints Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister Amid Budget Crisis and Political Turmoil
Supreme Court temporarily allows Trump to pause billions in foreign aid
Charlie Sheen says his father, Martin Sheen, turned him in to the police: 'The greatest betrayal possible'
Vatican hosts first Catholic LGBTQ pilgrimage
×