The Risk of Morality and Movement Politics
What do Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have in common? At the surface, both are white males from the northeast. Both have been mocked for their hair, though for its color and unruliness, respectively. Obviously, both are consequential figures in the United States’ current political climate. But perhaps most significantly, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both employ urgent, inflammatory prose in their respective brands of movement politics, galvanizing their base into preaching their messages themselves. In stark contrast with the policy-based campaigns of, for instance, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders energize supporters to fight in a seemingly all-encompassing battle between diametrically opposed systems of morality.
But it is worth considering whether these campaigns of movement politics are what we want political participation to look like in the United States. Should the battle for the highest political office in the country be a bitter one pitting good against evil, right against wrong? Moreover, does a tired, preoccupied, and generally uninvolved electorate have enough mental stamina to withstand such pervasive, morally pressing election cycles? The strategy of movement politics is exhausting, both for the candidates employing it and for their potential voters. Dividing the nation by solidifying faction allegiances and discouraging moderate voters, movement politics threatens the efficacy of American democracy.
In considering the all-or-nothing, all-encompassing style of movement politics, we must ask ourselves: is victory worth its cost.
The distinction between movement politics and general populism is thin, with the two overlapping throughout much of political history. Populism appeals to class conflict, emphasizing conflict between the people and societal elites, between haves and the have-nots; movement politics, meanwhile, pertains to issues—often moral ones—and uses them to drive voter engagement. Populist appeals usually involve movement politics, but movement politics need not employ populism. For instance, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren uses both populism and movement politics. Her attacks on corporations highlight class conflict and simultaneously moralize the issue, creating a broad movement of support for her policies. By contrast, environmentalist candidates may run on the basis that protecting the environment is morally required of humanity as the planet’s dominant species and inspire an environmentalist movement without invoking arguments pertaining to the profits of fossil fuel corporations. In past years, however, some candidates for office ran—and won—all but exclusively on policy, not needing to invoke wide-ranging class struggles or broad injustices to secure votes.
Recently, candidates often wield populism in conjunction with movement politics to mobilize their most ardent supporters in the hopes that a tidal wave of ballots will sweep them into office. Movement politics enhances and energizes debates, interviews, signature quotes, and rallies. Loud, fervent supporters feel as though they collectively form something bigger than themselves, each merely one member of a vast crusade to forever remedy a true illness of the world. Upon achieving election victory, elation and optimism toward the future permeate the base’s ranks.
Dividing the nation by solidifying faction allegiances and discouraging moderate voters, movement politics threatens the efficacy of American democracy.
Upon losing, however, a candidate’s supporters feel a hit of cataclysmic proportions. When Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, for instance, countless voters took to social media in despair. Cable news interviewees predicted America’s imminent demise, its inevitable descent into moral squalor. But while the Trump administration’s effect on the United States is debatable, the country remains intact and moderate optimism permeates among former Clinton supporters that any changes under his administration are rectifiable. With the failure of Clinton’s movement for women in political office, many of her voters now flock to others for the 2020 primary. Aligning themselves again with candidates who employ strategies of movement politics, those political participants gear up once more for what will be an unquestionably bitter election cycle. They hope to knock Donald Trump out of office by swaying public opinion against him and swinging the pendulum of political favor back toward them more brutally than it was torn from them in 2016.
But despite the increasing popularity of movement politics, polling reveals that most Americans remain moderate on most political issues. With no strong alignment to either side, opposing sides trap the moderate American. Stuck with only two parties, both of whom noisily preach moral perspectives and hurl insults at the other, alienated moderates are less likely to vote at all. The vigor and moral necessity of movement politics discourages the very voters it hopes to spur, rendering it a questionable tactic when the goal is winning over essential moderates.
When politics are moralized, the high of victory reaches the stratosphere, while the low of defeat sinks to the earth’s core. The battle itself pits the moral “us” against the immoral “them,” making any compromise an unforgivable betrayal of ideals. But in politics, where each side inevitably wins some fights and loses others, a compromise toward the moderate values of most Americans is often necessary. In considering the all-or-nothing, all-encompassing style of movement politics, we must ask ourselves: is victory worth its cost?