The Human Nature Election

Why Democrats Need a New Generation of Joe Bidens

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Men like it when you’re tough. Men like it when you get up from a bullet. Men like it when you work their dirty jobs. When you show camaraderie. When you’re their comrade. When you fight for them. That’s White men, Black men, Latino men, Asian men. It’s part of human nature. 

Men and women like it when you’re comfortable, when you’re authentic, when you speak off the cuff. Even if you go a little too far, it’s better than not doing it at all. It’s part of human nature. 

Most men and women desire each other. We desire each other sexually and romantically. We’re evolved to desire different things in each other, to chase after those things, and to talk about our pursuits openly. It’s part of human nature. 

For around two decades, Democrats were burdened with an ideology that saw these things as not just wrong, but deeply evil. “Wokeness” believed in a variation of original sin: that noticing human nature, let alone participating in it, was a deep sin. It was an unforgivable sin. There was no path to redemption. There was no forgiveness. There was no confession. 

Normal human romance was sexism. Normal human humor was racism. Wokeness was almost the polar opposite of charisma. To be charismatic, you have to tell stories and jokes that push the boundary. And the more uncomfortable the joke, the more a joke hits deep enough to make people, especially men, go “he really got me there,” the more it was demonized. 

The worst sin of all was noticing. It was noticing natural differences. Accepting them. Even taking joy in them and using them to bring people together, as many comedians do, could get you exiled. 

Wokeness festered to a nearly unimaginable degree. It took over universities, the entire Democratic political machine, and most of corporate America. And it was unabashedly associated with the Democratic Party. It promoted the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party promoted it. 

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was obsessed with woke identity. So were many Democratic candidates in 2020, though not their eventual candidate for President, Joe Biden. 

It’s true that Kamala Harris backed off talking about the issue at all, but wokeness is not just talking. Wokeness is an attitude. Wokeness is averse to noticing these differences and let alone participating in them. Wokeness is a way of life, a style of behavior which requires politicians to  be constantly neurotic about the smallest ways that reality could offend sensibilities. And behaving woke continues to be rewarded in the Democratic party, even when speaking woke might not. 

So to win back the voters, especially the working class voters that Clinton and Harris lost, requires acting in a pre-woke way. And you don’t have to look any further than the last Democratic president to show you how: Joe Biden telling stories about Cornpop, confronting and calling a protester fat, and even going off into some of his old man rants. Those were natural things to do. As much as Republicans mocked him for them, he still won in 2020. 

After Joe Biden became their candidate, you wouldn’t get left-wing media calling him racist or sexist for doing it. Working-class people of all races who could see themselves in Joe. They could see a Democrat who behaved normally, and wasn’t ashamed of it. 

But the Democratic Party is running out of Joe Bidens. He’s just getting too old. And many of the Democratic politicians who have that authenticity are no different, from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin. This charm goes beyond ideology, at least economic or legal ideology. After all, what do Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders even agree on? Here’s your answer: They’re comfortable with the basic reality that men will be men and women will be women. 

At the same time, this attitude is a real philosophical principle. It warps the persona, behavior, and strategy of world-class politicians. 

Democrats want to move on. You can’t fault men for admiring bravery, charisma or authenticity. You can’t scorn men and women for having natural desires. You can’t win elections like that.

This desire to move on has trapped Democrats between a rock and a hard place. Woke activists have spent decades making human nature synonymous with racism and sexism. Smart Democratic operatives are right to want to move on from discussing those words. The more they talk about those words, the more they even mention them, the more they lose voters. And if they’re pushing back on the new-age definitions of racism and sexism, they still risk losing standing in their own party. 

But Democrats can’t return to ground reality without talking about those words. They can’t learn to appreciate men for being men and women for being women until they fight back on that verbal territory. To even have a chance, Democrats need to redefine racism and sexism – back to definitions in the original civil rights act, before activists stole it. To do that, Democrats need to discuss those terms more. They need to talk about racism and sexism, what those words originally meant, and how people who identified with their own party stole it from Democrats who had it right, like Joe Biden. And that comes at a temporary political price. 

That’s the only way Democrats can get another generation of politicians that can act like normal people. That’s the only way they can get another candidate who is comfortable acting according to human nature. Otherwise, the candidates will only get weirder and weirder as the neurotic social landmines pop up in all directions, forming a kafkaesque set of social contradictions meant to keep voters from either noticing human nature or noticing its absence. 

As long as we live in a Democracy, you can’t outrun human nature.