The Future of the Left
The Objective, November 24, 2024
In both Europe and the United States, social democracy faces the challenge of rebuilding its political project after suffering defeats at the hands of new majorities, partly drawn from its former voter base. As usual, Spain is only exceptional in timing. Our official left has also lost touch with centrist voters and remains in power only thanks to European manna and the incompetence of an opposition clinging to the past, unsure of what it wants to become. Sooner or later, both will have to pivot strategically, rejecting identity extremism and embracing pragmatism.
They could learn from Bill Clinton. In 1984, Ronald Reagan crushed Walter Mondale with 58.8% of the vote and 525 of the 538 electoral college votes. Sensible Democrats understood that aligning with extremists condemned them to irrelevance. A few years later, Clinton confirmed this shift by breaking ties with radical factions. He distanced himself from identity leaders like Jesse Jackson and positioned himself as a champion of the middle class.
However, Clinton fell short in severing ties with extremism. Years later, Obama squandered his vast political capital by returning to identity politics, which, by its nature, prioritizes equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity. Yet the latter is the only effective lifeline for social-democratic ideals.
Today, both the U.S. Democratic Party and Spanish left-wing parties need a course similar to Clinton’s. They’ve ceded too much ground to minorities disconnected from and even disdainful of the average citizen. If they fail to reclaim the political center, they risk prolonging this disconnect or even disappearing, as many of their European counterparts have already done.
The flight of progressive commentators and intellectuals from Twitter (now X) to its rival, Bluesky, illustrates this risk. Twitter has long been an imperfect, multifaceted, and even chaotic space where diverse and opposing voices coexisted uneasily. Many who now dramatize their departure had no complaints when, before Elon Musk’s 2022 purchase, Twitter’s centralized content moderation was so biased it banned Donald Trump while allowing Nicolás Maduro and Ali Khamenei to remain.
Musk eased content moderation, maintaining bans on illegal content while replacing most centralized moderation—seen by many as ideological censorship—with decentralized verification. Users can now post “community notes” to fact-check information in real-time. This tool’s effectiveness in combating misinformation was demonstrated by the quick debunking of a false story from Agencia EFE about an alleged accident at Madrid’s Torre de Cristal.
Musk also allowed users to choose between a chronological feed of followed accounts and an interest-based timeline. Both systems are designed to generate traffic but let users pick between an echo chamber or the real world. What they don’t permit is creating a fictional world tailored to personal preferences.
This doubly decentralized approach—open fact-checking and user choice—seems too much for those accustomed to controlling the narrative. Yet the debate over Twitter reflects a deeper evolution: public discourse is increasingly out of the hands of specialists. For better or worse, it’s open to everyone.
Those retreating from platforms like Twitter reinforce the perception that they yearn for the past—a bygone aristocracy where intellectual elites dictated moral and political codes. In the Middle Ages, religious elites dominated; then, with the printing press, intellectual and scientific ones; and finally, in the 20th century, media elites. They competed for power, but no one questioned their specialized roles.
Today, this specialization is in crisis. Those abandoning Twitter exile themselves to the past. They may find happiness but will live isolated. No prepackaged message from an echo chamber can succeed in the real world. Experts will remain, but no one will heed those ensconced in ivory towers, hearing only their own voices.
Modernity no longer thrives on centralized systems controlling the debate. The future lies in decentralized solutions like Twitter’s community notes, which leverage the viral nature of social media to enhance truthfulness. These tools, though imperfect, foster a more competitive marketplace of ideas and deserve freedom to evolve without the regulatory meddling so typical of the European Union. Let’s not forget that artificial intelligence lowers barriers in this market even further—perhaps why so many Luddite intellectuals oppose it.
In this context, if the left wants to stay relevant, it must embrace democratic debate and abandon the urge to control it. The future belongs to those who adapt to a plural, diverse, and sometimes—like all things human—unpleasant reality. Learn from Clinton and embrace the creative chaos of platforms like Twitter. This isn’t just a political strategy; it’s about survival. At the very least, it will serve as an ideological vaccine, building immunity.