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Why Progressives Must Let Go of Their Democratic Goldilocks Complex
While crucial terrain upon which we must maneuver strategically, true systemic change will not come through electoral politics alone, particularly within a party fundamentally wedded to capitalist interests.
Aug 22, 2024
In her impassioned speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama struck a chord with many progressives when she urged Democratic voters to overcome their "Goldilocks complex" regarding Kamala Harris's electability. "We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected," she declared, addressing concerns about Harris's racial background and gender.
While Obama's call to action was inspiring for many, it inadvertently highlighted a much deeper and more problematic Goldilocks complex within progressive circles—perpetually searching for the "just right" Democratic politician who can somehow thread the needle between radical change and mainstream acceptability. This futile quest, exemplified by the enthusiasm for figures like Kamala Harris or even more avowedly left wing politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, leads to a cycle of hope and disappointment as each new "progressive" candidate inevitably compromises their ideals upon gaining power.
The fundamental flaw in this approach is the misguided belief that true systemic change can come through electoral politics alone, particularly within a party fundamentally wedded to capitalist interests. By fixating on finding the perfect candidate to address issues like authoritarianism, inequality, imperialism, war, discrimination, and climate change, progressives block themselves from recognizing that elections should be just one tactical part of a broader strategy for social and economic transformation. This myopic focus prevents the development of alternative structures and intersectional movements necessary for genuine socialist change. While strategic engagement with centrist parties may sometimes be necessary as a defensive measure against far-right authoritarianism, progressives must abandon the delusion that internal reform of capitalist parties can ever be sufficient.
True opposition to authoritarianism requires, thus, more than just rhetorical condemnation or appeals to defend existing democratic institutions. It demands a positive vision of a more just and equitable society, coupled with concrete actions to address the material conditions that make authoritarianism attractive to many.
Real progress demands building grassroots organizations, reinvigorating labor movements, creating mutual aid networks, and fostering broad coalitions that address the interconnected nature of various forms of oppression. Only by letting go of the Goldilocks complex and embracing the challenging work of building socialist alternatives can progressives move beyond the cycle of electoral disappointment and begin to address the true scale of the challenges we face, working towards a future of genuine freedom, equality, and sustainability for all.
The Democratic Goldilocks Complex: Searing for the "Just Right" Capitalist Politician
The Democratic Party, despite its occasional progressive rhetoric, remains fundamentally wedded to the capitalist system that perpetuates many of the issues progressives seek to address. While figures like Kamala Harris may represent important symbolic victories in terms of representation, their policies often fall far short of the radical changes needed to tackle the root causes of our societal problems. Democratic administrations have consistently failed to deliver meaningful change in areas such as economic inequality, climate change, healthcare, foreign policy, and criminal justice reform. These failures stem not from a lack of good intentions, but from the inherent limitations of working within a system designed to prioritize profit and maintain existing power structures.
The progressive Goldilocks complex manifests in the perpetual search for the perfect capitalist politician who can somehow thread the needle between radical change and mainstream acceptability. This quest has led to a cycle of hope and disappointment, as each new "progressive" candidate inevitably compromises their ideals upon gaining power. From Bill Clinton's "Third Way" to Barack Obama's "Hope and Change" to the more recent progressive insurgency within the Democratic Party, each iteration has promised transformative change while ultimately reinforcing the status quo. This pattern persists because the fundamental contradictions of capitalism cannot be resolved through electoral politics alone.
The allure of finding the "just right" capitalist politician is understandable. It offers the promise of change without the messy and challenging work of building alternative structures and movements. However, this approach ultimately serves to co-opt progressive energy and redirect it into supporting a system that is inherently opposed to true economic and social justice.
Beyond Ballots: Building Real Progressive Power
To break free from the Goldilocks complex, progressives must recognize that the solutions to our most pressing problems lie outside the confines of capitalist politics. This doesn't mean abandoning electoral engagement entirely, but rather understanding its limitations and focusing on building alternative structures and movements.
Key areas where progressives should focus their efforts include grassroots organizing, reinvigorating labor movements, creating mutual aid networks, developing educational initiatives, establishing cooperative enterprises, and building intersectional coalitions. By focusing on these areas, progressives can begin to build the infrastructure and popular support necessary for genuine systemic change.
Recognizing the limitations of centrist capitalist parties does not mean completely disengaging from electoral politics. In fact, socialists and progressives must often make strategic decisions to support centrist candidates as a bulwark against far-right authoritarianism. The rise of fascist and authoritarian movements around the world presents a clear and present danger that cannot be ignored. In this context, supporting centrist parties can be a necessary defensive measure to preserve democratic spaces and prevent the implementation of even more repressive policies.
However, this support must be tactical and conditional, never losing sight of the ultimate goal of systemic transformation. Progressives should view engagement with centrist parties as a means of buying time and space to build alternative structures and movements, not as an end in itself.
One of the most persistent manifestations of the Goldilocks complex is the belief that centrist capitalist parties can be internally reformed to enact the type of change needed to address our most pressing challenges. This belief has led many progressives to invest enormous energy in trying to "push the party left" through primary challenges, platform fights, and grassroots pressure. While these efforts can sometimes yield modest policy gains, they ultimately fail to address the structural limitations of parties beholden to corporate interests and wedded to capitalist ideology.
Building Intersectional Movements for Socialist Change
The rise of authoritarian populism that centrist parties so vocally deplore is itself a symptom of the failures of neoliberal capitalism. The economic insecurity, social atomization, and loss of faith in institutions that fuel right-wing movements are direct consequences of policies championed by both center-left and center-right parties over the past several decades.
The path forward for progressives lies not in finding the perfect capitalist politician or party, but in building broad, intersectional movements for socialist change. These movements must recognize the interconnected nature of various forms of oppression and exploitation, and work to address them collectively.
Crucial elements of such movements include centering a critique of capitalism and class exploitation while recognizing how it intersects with other forms of oppression, actively combating racial oppression, incorporating feminist perspectives, fighting for environmental justice, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, incorporating disability justice, and opposing imperialism. By building movements that address these intersecting issues, progressives can create a powerful force for systemic change that goes beyond the limitations of capitalist electoral politics.
Building strong progressive movements serves a dual purpose: it enhances our ability to pressure mainstream political parties while simultaneously creating a bulwark against the rise of far-right extremism. By focusing on grassroots organizing, labor mobilization, and community-based initiatives, progressives can cultivate a power base that exists independently of electoral cycles.
This independent power allows progressives to approach political engagement from a position of strength. Rather than relying solely on internal party mechanisms or the charisma of individual candidates, a well-organized movement can exert external pressure on parties to adopt more progressive policies. The threat of withholding votes or mounting primary challenges becomes more credible when backed by a mobilized base.
Moreover, these movements create alternative spaces for political engagement and community building. By addressing immediate needs through mutual aid networks and fostering solidarity through shared struggle, progressive movements can offer a compelling counter-narrative to the alienation and resentment that often fuel far-right recruitment.
This grassroots approach is crucial in challenging the far-right at its source. By being present and active in communities, progressive movements can directly confront the economic anxieties and social dislocations that right-wing populists exploit. They can offer concrete solutions and a sense of collective agency that undermines the appeal of authoritarian demagogues.
True opposition to authoritarianism requires, thus, more than just rhetorical condemnation or appeals to defend existing democratic institutions. It demands a positive vision of a more just and equitable society, coupled with concrete actions to address the material conditions that make authoritarianism attractive to many.
As we confront the enormous challenges of our time—from climate change to rising authoritarianism to deepening inequality—progressives must abandon the Goldilocks complex that leads us to seek salvation in slightly better versions of the status quo. This doesn't mean completely disengaging from electoral politics or ignoring the real dangers posed by far-right movements. Strategic engagement with centrist parties can sometimes be necessary as a defensive measure. However, progressives must never lose sight of the fact that these parties are structurally incapable of addressing the root causes of our current crises. Their solutions not in finding the perfect capitalist savior, but in our collective power to imagine and create a fundamentally different kind of society.
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Barack Obama Is Going After Old Men. His Real Target Is Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who consistently scares the political establishment, and the Obamas can’t stop themselves from showing whose side they’re on.
Dec 16, 2019
While you won't see former president Barack Obama appearing at any town halls or any public events as the Democrats seek to oust Donald Trump from the White House, you can, if you can afford it, see him in a series of rooms - ballrooms, conference rooms, small theaters - talking to donors about what he thinks everyone else is doing wrong. His exasperation has found several targets at these private events, from the young activists he accused of just being mad online to the old white men running for office he accused of "not getting out of the way".
At this latest event in Singapore, Obama announced that women were "indisputably" better leaders than men. If the whole world was run by women, Obama speculated, "you would see a significant improvement across the board on ... living standards and outcomes."
While potentially opening himself up to a million hate tweets by Hillary Clinton supporters still upset about 2008 and 2016, the comments seem pointed at one old white man in particular: Bernie Sanders.
There are two old white men in running for the nomination: Sanders and his good ole pal best bud forever, Joe Biden. The billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer don't count here because I'm not convinced they're not both Spider-Man villains. And while Obama's withholding of an official endorsement for his former vice-president does seem pointed, the more likely target of his continued frustration is Sanders.
Just last month, it was reported by Politico that Obama had privately spoken about the Vermont senator seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, saying that while he is mostly taking a hands off approach to the primary, if Sanders started to win he would "speak up to stop him".
It's not clear what Obama's interference could do that the media's strange silence about Sanders's campaign hasn't already done. The mass media has been avoiding using Sanders's name like they're trying to avoid summoning Beetlejuice. But Obama's hostility is understandable, given that Sanders is the candidate most outspoken about putting a stop to the great neoliberal experiment that privatized all services, hollowed out the middle class and removed most social welfare safety nets, an experiment Obama was an enthusiastic facilitator of. This isn't the first verbal subtweet the former president has made, insisting earlier this year that the electorate didn't want revolution - which is I guess how someone like him sees a project like nationalized health insurance - only "improvement".
What makes this latest statement even odder is that there is no clear candidate he could be supporting with his championing of women leaders. Elizabeth Warren is the highest woman in the polls, but his administration was excessively antagonistic toward her back when she was pushing for them to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It's unlikely a lovefest will develop between the two now.
Maybe it was just vague virtue signalling and scoring easy points with centrist feminists? Just another bland platitude they can slap on a T-shirt and sell on Etsy? It would be boring to list all of the women leaders who would immediately disprove Obama's claims about women leaders. Margaret Thatcher! Imelda Marcos! We gave Aung San Suu Kyi both a Nobel peace prize and a whole U2 song about her and even that couldn't keep her from committing crimes against humanity. It's almost--almost--like the real problem here is power and its morally corrupting qualities and not who is doing the wielding of it.
The Obama legacy is still in flux. He exited the White House with a rosy glow, and in the early days of the Trump administration, one could easily look back at the Obama administration with a nostalgic longing for its dignity, its lack of scandal and its "good" taste.
But as the offenses of the Trump administration mounted, from highly visible mass deportations to the Muslim ban to military interventions overseas, more and more people started to notice many of these policy positions were either started or continued by the Obamas.
Michelle Obama recently announced that she can be friends with the former president George W Bush because "our values are the same." People were outraged, but if you compare administrations, you start to see what those values they share truly are. They both valued waging war in foreign countries and supporting the removal of their leaders. They both valued prosecuting government whistleblowers and conducting massive surveillance against its own people. They both valued bailing out and subsidizing banks and corporations over citizens.
Many of the candidates for the Democratic nominee also share these values, from Pete "Definitely Not CIA" Buttigieg to Amy "We Can't Have Nice Things" Klobuchar to Elizabeth "Good Capitalist" Warren. Of course he'd be maneuvering against the one candidate who values different things, like economic justice and fewer deaths from people who can't afford their medically necessary insulin.
Or maybe the Obamas just saw on Wikipedia that their net worth is somewhere around $70m, and they're trying to avoid paying Sanders's wealth tax. Either way, .
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Caster Semenya Is Being Forced to Alter her Body to Make Slower Runners Feel Secure in Their Womanhood
The courts decided that discriminating against some women is required for athletic competitions to be “fair” to other women
May 03, 2019
Discrimination against some women is "necessary" to protect other women, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport's ruling in the Caster Semenya case.
The CAS' decision comes in a challenge to the International Association of Athletics Federations' regulations for athletes with differences of sex development brought by Semenya, the Black South African runner who produces more testosterone naturally than has been deemed typical of cisgender women. The regulations that Semenya challenged would require her to artificially suppress her hormone levels in order to continue to compete in women's events. In the executive summary of the still-confidential full decision, the court explained that the "regulations are discriminatory but that ... such discrimination is a necessary."
Notably, the regulations and decision apply only to eight events -- three of which are the races that Semenya generally runs.
This decision comes during the current political moment of global attack against individuals who do not fit stereotypes of binary sexual difference, and after a long history of white authorities policing the bodies of women of color, particularly those Black and Indigenous women from the global south.
In other words, the CAS has decided that differential treatment for Black women, trans women and intersex women is required for athletic competitions to be "fair" to other women -- at least, it is under a system in which white people wield tremendous power over the bodies and autonomy of those who are perceived to be a threat. This decision comes during the current political moment of global attack against individuals who do not fit stereotypes of binary sexual difference, and after a long history of white authorities policing the bodies of women of color, particularly those Black and Indigenous women from the global south.
"I know that the IAAF's regulations have always targeted me specifically," Semenya said in a statement after the issuance of the decision. "For a decade, the IAAF has tried to slow me down, but this has actually made me stronger."
She added, "The decision of the CAS will not hold me back. I will once again rise above and continue to inspire young women and athletes in South Africa and around the world."
Many people reacting to the decision have mischaracterized Semenya's identity, calling her transgender (she is not) or male (she is not). She is a non-transgender woman who produces more testosterone than some percentage of other non-transgender women.
As Katrina Karkazis explained in a Guardian column in March, "Labeling women 'biological males' draws a dubious connection between sex, testosterone and athleticism that relies on long-discarded ideas that men and women can have a 'true sex,' that testosterone is a 'male sex hormone' and that testosterone is the key to superior athleticism. None of these are true, and it's long overdue that people stop saying they are."
The idea that you can identify a single physiological trait that neatly separates two binary sexes is simply false and serves the very structures of patriarchy and white supremacy that are used to attack powerful Black women (cisgender and transgender) who are perceived to trespass on the spaces that people want to reserve for white women.
The idea that you can identify a single physiological trait that neatly separates two binary sexes is simply false and serves the very structures of patriarchy and white supremacy that are used to attack powerful Black women.
Bodies are often coded as appropriately "male" or appropriately "female" through a lens of racism and white supremacy. And that lens is used to police some bodies in the alleged service of others: Just google "Serena Williams" or "Michelle Obama" alongside anti-transgender slurs to see how Black bodies and trans bodies are policed out of the category of "woman."
This deliberate narrative about testosterone and "maleness" is used to hurt both Black cisgender women like Semenya and all transgender women who are being systematically excluded from women's spaces and categories. Caster Semenya is not a man: She is a Black woman runner who is being subject to repeated public scrutiny and invasive bodily regulation because she disrupts expectations.
As Nation Sports editor Dave Zirin points out, "arguments about who is really 'female' have been used against women athletes for as long as women have played sports." These efforts to define some female athletes out of the category of "woman" have been leveraged particularly against Black women.
The CAS decision is part of an escalating narrative that some women threaten the integrity of the category of "woman" altogether. For instance, former elite athletes in the United States and the United Kingdom have mobilized to oppose legislative and other protections for transgender women, falsely claiming that they will mark the end of women's athletics. These claims inaccurately compare transgender women to non-transgender men, ignore the history of trans participation in sport with no dominance whatsoever and open the door to widespread attacks on the trans community by claiming that our bodies inherently threaten others.
The search for a true, binary, biological sex in each individual is, in truth, both futile and dangerous. The imperatives behind these searches are almost always exclusionary in nature and greatly misapprehend the extent to which our bodies and physiological characteristics are affected by our experiences in the world.
The idea, for example, that a woman who is transgender is equal to a non-transgender man is patently false. In addition to the many medical changes that some people undergo to align their bodies and hormone levels with those typical of their lived gender, how we experience both trauma and social engagement in the world greatly impact our bodily function. It is why and how, at the population level, life expectancy is so varied across race, class and geographic lines.
Existing systems of power may only approve of some women as "women" and attempt to write people deemed insufficiently male or female out of spaces in varying ways. But we can all only survive as our authentic selves -- and so we will keep fighting to exist in our full truths, however inconvenient those truths may be to those who want to keep power (and medals) only for themselves.
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