The same is true in Europe.

While the neoliberal consensus is that Emmanuel Macron’s victory over the reprehensible Marine Le Pen in France was another victory for the anemic center, more votes were cast for populist candidates in the first round of voting than were cast for either of the “level-headed centrists” (i.e. Macron & Fillon). The plurality of the Millennial vote in that first round of voting went to the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, running on a platform including a maximum income and 100% renewable energy.

Polling in the current UK election likewise shows overwhelming support for Labour among Millennials, a party led by a man, Jeremy Corbyn, who is so far to the left of the political mainstream he makes Bernie Sanders look like Hillary Clinton by comparison.

So even if nothing happened politically for a decade or so, progressive and socialist ideas would still become the mainstream by demographics alone. Of course we can’t just sit on our hands for ten years. If we do we’re liable to find ourselves slaving in serfdoms for the global corporate elite in their mountain chateaus, just waiting for the sea level to rise and drown us all.

Leftists need to look around and take stock of where we are in this pivotal moment in global history and seize upon it. We’re at a juncture where Capitalism’s contradictions are coming into sharp focus for the mass of people. We need to make it clear that we have a positive plan to move forward, and not be afraid of voicing it, even though Neera Tanden and Nancy Pelosi will keep telling us we’re wrong.

Rosa Luxembourg told us over a hundred years ago that we’d have to choose between socialism and barbarism and that choice is being made now all around the world. If the Left doesn’t assert itself — and that includes differentiating itself from the liberal center — the reactionary Right will.

No Left to be “Alt” to

All of the above developments have not been lost on the neoliberal ruling class, it’s why the DNC has done everything it can to prevent Bernie-backed candidates from taking even largely powerless positions, even if the candidate backed Hillary in the primary, and denying funds to Bernie-aligned candidates for office, while backing centrists.

It’s the reason we’ve started to see articles with ridiculous titles like:

Let’s be clear on one point right off the bat: there is no inherent worth in taking a position “in the middle” between what you perceive to be two extremes. In fact, it’s a logical fallacy with it’s own name, The Middle Ground Fallacy. Can anyone explain why we should shoot for the middle ground between white supremacy and “extreme” anti-racism? Or what that would even look like?

Racism is an easy example to point to, in order to show how fundamentally illogical this point of view is, but iterations of this argument are being made on real issues today, issues of existential importance.

While those of us on the left call for an improved medicare-for-all system of healthcare, ensuring exactly zero people find themselves without insurance, right-wing reactionaries cook up a plan to leave 43 million without it. Liberal democrats, in their infinite wisdom, have found the “sensible” middle ground of leaving “only” 29 million without insurance.

While leftists and scientists alike raise the alarm that we need to move to 100% renewable energy in order to have any kind of future on this planet, GOP extremists deny that there is any problem at all (except, that is, the War on Coal). Liberals, meanwhile, engage in their own form of “soft climate denial”, calling for an “all of the above” approach, which really just means that they are fine putting coal miners on the street as long as long as energy companies can keep making profits on fracked gas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions (themselves notorious for under-predictions) tell us in no uncertain terms that any scenario that doesn’t involve moving to a totally carbon-neutral economy will push us over the notorious 2 degree limit.

This is part of the reason that the “Alt-Left” label is laughable.

Where is the “left” that progressives and socialists are supposed to be the alternative version of? It sure isn’t the dismal dollar-drenched Democrats, who even today are willing to drop any pretense of #Resistance the moment Trump drops a bomb.

There is simply no definition of a political “left” that includes support for colonial wars. Jesus, why do I even have to write that?

And, of all the issues that the Democrats equivocate on, and try to take “reasonable” centrist positions on, there is still one area where they are comfortable with taking a strong stance.

To say that progressives and socialists are the “alt” or “extreme” version of liberals and Democrats is flat out wrong. We are already a distinct movement with our own values, many of which are contrary to those of Democrats.

When DNC chair Tom Perez says that “the economy has to work for everyone” or that the Democrats are a “big tent party” he’s lying to you. What he’s doing is playing to an ignorance of history and class relations that is, frankly, rampant among liberals in the US. The fact of the matter is, the class interests of the mass of working people, Republicans and Democrats, People of Color and whites, are diametrically opposed to those of the ruling and ownership classes.

The economy can’t work for all of us. We want higher wages, they want higher profit margins. We want workplace safety and environmental protections, they want higher profit margins. We want everyone to have the opportunity to live lives of dignity and purpose, they want higher profit margins.

A cursory glace at the economic and political status quo will reveal whose interests our politicians have been working toward.

And this is the ultimate failing of the Democrats. They are, without a doubt, a party that serves the ruling class at the expense of the working class and prioritizes colonial wars over domestic suffering, but officially that’s the Republicans’ shtick , so they need to appear otherwise. This is why the Democrats can’t do ought else but roll out tired tweaks to a system clearly on its last legs, or hope that the GOP fucks up so spectacularly that folks will hold their nose and vote for GOP-lite Democrats. The same could be said of the Blairites in the UK Labour Party or of Emmanuel Macron in France.

The spectacle of the Democrats bursting into song as the GOP passed legislation that will lead to the early deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, because they felt it boosted their career prospects (and hopefully prevented them from having to run on a single-payer platform in 2018) is a grotesque microcosm of today’s political landscape.

The reason the backlash to the status quo has, thus far, taken on a reactionary character, is not because the world isn’t ready for a leftist alternative, but because they haven’t been seriously presented with one. Hillary Clinton wasn’t the left alternative to Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Bernie was. Hillary was a vote for “America is already great”, a stance no one but the handful of folks at her rallies or million-dollar fundraisers actually believes.

So leftists need to take Quist’s loss in Montana as a speed bump on the way to electoral domination, not a repudiation of leftist ideas as an method to get there. To win over Republican voters we need to talk about solidarity among the working class, and make the case that this makes more sense than solidarity among racial groups or political parties. We all have a lot more in common with each other than we do the leaders of either party, and we can win if we make that clear. That means that if leftists decide to try to run within the Democratic party, they need to vocally differentiate themselves from the likes of Nancy Pelosi and the milquetoast platform of the national party. Quist lost despite his insistence on real overarching progressive change, not because of it.