No Moral High Ground
The progressive left has abandoned its values for the sake of retaking power.
Free Expression is a daily newsletter on American life, politics and culture from the Opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. Sign up and start reading Free Expression today.
If Graham Platner were running for Senate in an earlier era, his scandal-plagued past might’ve rendered him unelectable. But on Tuesday night, the Hotchkiss Oysterman clinched the Democratic primary race in Maine without social-justice warriors lifting their pitchforks.
The success of the Nazi-tattooed candidate shows the extent to which progressive voters today are willing to overlook a problematic past. As reports surfaced of his offensive online posts, sexting other women during his marriage and physically threatening and “toxic” behavior in past relationships, most members of his party didn’t retract their endorsements. They didn’t flood social media with statements of solidarity for his ex-girlfriends or with pride flag emojis protesting his homophobic Reddit posts. Rather, Mr. Platner maintained his edge among voters, including younger Democrats, and achieved a stunning turnout Tuesday. His superfans echoed dismissals from Democratic Party leaders that the spate of scandals represents “a dark chapter in his life” and “he has grown as a person.”
How much the political and cultural climate has changed in the few years since what we can now call “peak woke.” Recall the protests that erupted on Capitol Hill and across the country during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Or consider any of the public figures in media and politics, on both the left and the right, who lost their jobs and their reputations in the heat of cancel culture and #MeToo.
While much of the media is still obsessed with these kinds of stories, even the more youthful and progressive corners of the American electorate have largely moved on. Social-justice issues appear nowhere in the key findings of a Harvard Youth Poll of Gen Z voters this spring. A Yale Youth Poll of voters under 35 found that “foreign policy, AI, and culture-war issues like acceptance of LGBTQ+ people ranked far lower” as priorities than the cost of living and affordability did. Mr. Platner, who previously identified as a “vegetable-growing, psychedelics-taking socialist,” doesn’t disagree with wokeism. But he didn’t campaign on it. The movement-driven politics that surrounded the 2018 midterms resonate far less with voters in 2026 than appeals to economic survival.
This shift also evinces a cultural numbness to offensive rhetoric and behavior. Young voters have grown up in a vitriolic online world where the threshold for provocative statements soars ever higher in the competition for attention. For much of their formative years, Donald Trump has been president. Politics has been a maelstrom of midnight rage-tweets and sexual-misconduct claims. Left-wing activists finally lost their monopoly on American culture, while everyone else grew exhausted by or lost interest in the excessively sensitive mainstream progressivism of a decade ago. As actress Cate Blanchett recently lamented, the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly” in Hollywood.
Cancel culture might’ve gone too far, but it seems the electability standards for politicians have fallen through the floor. It’s a bipartisan phenomenon. Texas Republicans chose Donald Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton to be their Senate candidate despite allegations of marital infidelity and other controversies.
Psychological studies have shown that liberals tend to prioritize values of care, fairness and equality, while conservatives tend to place a stronger emphasis on loyalty, tradition and purity. These are all moral values, the foundations of a healthy society. They seem to have gone out the window. Scandal might still take down Mr. Platner, but that he’s gotten this far reveals that ours is an age of political tribes, not principles.
Ms. Koch is associate editor of Free Expression.