Birth of a New Demographic - the Boiling Frog Liberal

Remember the old story about a frog in a pot of gradually warming water that never quite figures out it's getting dangerously hot? Many on today's traditional left are those frogs, except in this metaphor, culture is the warming water. For years scores of reliable Democrats have accepted the gradual cultural radicalization of what it means to be liberal. 

Except someone just threw them a thermometer. 

For as long as I can remember, there have been just two political dimensions through which Americans viewed their politics: economic and social. Conservatives focused more on economics, favoring low taxes and fiscal probity. Liberals were animated by social issues such as abortion and gay rights. Our two parties neatly reflected this divide (although there were always some who self-described as "economically conservative and socially liberal" ).

But there's a third, rapidly growing, dimension: culture. And it's this new dimension that has unmoored an enormous block of voters. These are the socially liberal and culturally conservative. We'll call them Boiling Frog Liberals, or "BoFros" for short. 

BoFros tend to be older, and tend to favor traditional liberal values such as free speech, equal treatment under the law, etc. They are very pro abortion and gay rights. But there are new cultural winds that have left BoFros in an unbalanced state, their political identities in doubt. Really, it's more of a hurricane.

How are cultural issues different from social issues? This is something the average sociologist could bore you to tears about, and, to be sure, there's overlap between the two concepts. But keeping to a political context, social issues have traditionally meant specific hot buttons like abortion rights and gay marriage. Hot buttons that our legislators vote on and our courts adjudicate.

Cultural issues, on the other hand, emanate outward from our institutions, most notably our universities, media, entertainment and tech. They inform how we relate to each other and treat each other on a broad level. Our culture changes when the collective output of these institutions changes. 

The most powerful cultural movement in America right now—a religion, really—is wokeism, and it is rewriting the rules at a torrid pace. Even the woke minions of Silicon Valley can't keep up. Facebook reached 71 gender options ("Objectum-sexuals," anyone?) before they threw up their hands and offered a simple "custom" button. 

Have at it, invent your own. Lots of people do.

In case you're catching up, movement scolds demand that we view everything and everyone through the lens of race, gender, and class. These are your defining characteristics, to the exclusion of everything else. Which specific race or gender you possess, and which class you inhabit, are the sole determinants of how you are treated. 

Woke deconstructionists also insist objective truth does not exist, truth merely being a construct of whoever holds the power. And yes, offending speech is considered violence, as a Berkeley professor chided Josh Hawley last week.

Needless to say, much of this should be antithetical to traditional liberals, and actually is antithetical to those of a certain age. As one dyed-in-the-wool liberal friend of mine put it, "Sometimes I wake up and think, gee, is that what we're supposed to believe today?"

Think of poor J.K. Rowling, a vocal lefty, now enemy #1 in the trans-woke community for daring, in the name of feminism, to cling to the wrongthink notion that there are biological differences between the sexes. (She and other liberals like Martina Navratilova have spoken up publicly against the idea that men can simply decide they are women and then compete in women's sports.)

Or consider the "scandal" surrounding the 2020 novel "American Dirt," the story of a Mexican single mother trying to make her way across the border to save herself from the murderous cartels who killed her journalist husband. A good liberal theme, no? Perhaps, except that the author, Jeanine Cummins, is a white American. It's not her story to tell!

Particularly interesting was the internecine struggle at Macmillan, the publisher. (Full disclosure: they are also the publisher of my own novel, Campusland.) Reportedly, virtually everyone under the age of 35 (or so) opposed publication. The older folks, thankfully still in charge, said, "Without cultural appropriation we wouldn't have fusion cuisine or the Rolling Stones!"

The publishing industry is famously liberal, so the episode perfectly captures this sudden cultural rupture on the left. It is a largely generational one. And yes, the older folks may still be in charge, but they find it increasingly difficult to resist the pressure of their younger, perpetually offended colleagues. 

Joe Biden may be the perfect distillation of this, although in his case, one of capitulation. As he and his party become the servant of the woke with embassies flying BLM flags and executive orders for "gender affirming healthcare," the BoFros find themselves politically homeless. 

Older BoFros, in particular, cut their teeth marching for free speech at Berkeley and Columbia. Now they're told speech is violence. They idolized MLK, but now they're told race is all that matters, and MLK is growing suspect. Character is but a construct of white supremacy. Keep up!

The cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming. And while voting Republican cuts against the very fiber of a BoFro's being—the GOP is anti-Roe!—it's starting to happen. In blue Virginia, scores of moms in the DC suburbs who voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden a mere twelve months earlier, were aghast at woke initiatives pursued after the Summer of George. The embrace of CRT, equality of results, trans mania—it was poisoning their kids. After years of ignoring the warming water, someone tossed them a thermometer. So, they did something unthinkable just a year before: they elected a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, whose entire campaign was premised on pushing back. How difficult pulling that lever must have been. It will be much easier the next time.

Minorities are also joining the ranks of the BoFros, as they discover their values don't align with gender studies professors at Yale. Asian-Americans, traditionally very Democratic, ousted several woke school board members in San Francisco who were more interested in renaming schools than educating kids. Hispanics are now equally divided between the parties, according to a recent New York Times poll. In the 2018 midterms, Hispanics favored Democrats by 48 points. Let that sink in.

So this is where we are, a fast-growing political class is both socially liberal and culturally conservative. Is it too early to call this a realignment? I don't think so, and the reality of it hasn't sunk in with the panjandrums in the Democrat elite. For the moment, this gives the Republicans the upper hand because the BoFros come entirely from the other party, driven into GOP hands by the orgiastic excesses of woke culture. No equivalent rift exists on the Republican side. How deep an inroad the GOP can make depends mostly on how long the AOCs and faculty lounge utopians can hold the Democrats' reins.

Right now, it looks to be a long time.