The Year Conservatives Became Cool

In a 2002 essay in the Claremont Review of Books titled, “To Be Young, Conservative, and Cool,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat reminisced about how his college culture was mired not just in a war of ideas but in “a war of attitudes, in which conservative-bashing is the last acceptable form of bigotry.” He argued that becoming “cool,” however difficult that might be, should be a top conservative priority.

Twenty-two years later, his wish may be coming true.

Remember when conservatives were the stodgy ones who represented the establishment and Democrats were the cool ones who cared for minorities and the underdogs?

How did Democrats suddenly become the party of the status quo while their conservative rivals have become the party of change and innovation? How did Dems come to represent the snobbish coastal elites who look with disdain at Trump voters while conservatives represent the working class that aspires to their share of the American Dream?

People vote for rational reasons like food prices, but also for emotional reasons like whether they think you’re cool and care about them. If they think you’re preachy and condescending, that’s one sure way to lose votes. 

Maybe the Dems assumed that because they own the culture, they also own the country. But the problem with “owning the culture” is that you’re no longer the counterculture. As painful as this is for Democrats to hear, it is conservatives today who represent the counterculture.

“Democrats have historically had these really close relationships with institutional media, institutional culture — Hollywood and the traditional press,” admitted Rob Flaherty, Vice President Kamala Harris’ deputy campaign manager, in a recent interview. In the era of Trump, those “close relationships” have become so cozy and hardwired as to become banal.

During the turbulent 1960s, banal was not a word one would use to describe Democrats. With the March on Washington, the Free Speech movement in Berkeley, anti-war demonstrations and the “free love” hippies at Woodstock, it became a law of nature that if you wanted to be cool, you had to be on the left. Politically, that meant you voted Democrat.

Voting Democrat wasn’t just an affiliation; it was an attitude. It meant you cared. It meant you weren’t straight and rigid. If you got hit by lightning and voted Republican, that meant you went over to the “dark side.”

This was, and in many ways still is, especially true in Jewish circles. Voting Democrat is your permission slip to enter polite society.

The results of the last election have shaken these assumptions. When Bernie Sanders, the eminence grise of the progressive left, accused his party of being controlled by “big money interests” and “well-paid consultants,” he was essentially telling his brethren they were now part of the dark side.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he famously wrote after Nov. 5. “Will [Democrats] understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy, which has so much economic power?”

Accuse Democrats of caring more about the powerful than the powerless and you might as well strip their identity. It’s acceptable to have too much compassion, but not enough? For a Democrat that is a spear to the soul.

This is why so many Dems were shell-shocked after Nov. 5. They felt rejected by the very people they claim to serve. They couldn’t fathom how so many Latinos, Asians, Blacks and urban voters who are usually hard-core Democrats moved to the other side. This is not 2016, when they could blame their loss on Trump’s white racist followers and still retain their mantle of “coolness.”

Once you lose minorities and urbanites, you’ve given up cool. You’ve given up your edge.

This also applies to Israel. Because Democrats are associated with the establishment — from the media to Hollywood to academia, where anti-Zionism rules– they’ve become predictable followers. Supporting Palestinians today is the conformist and safe choice. The real rebels, the ones who push back against the establishment, are the Zionists. They are the minority. They are the insurrectionists. They are the ones with the cojones to speak truth to power. They are the cool ones.

Even when Dems have tried to fight for minorities, as they did with Black Lives Matter, it’s been more virtue signaling than actually helping Black communities. They make lots of noise in support of the homeless, migrants and disadvantaged criminals, but that noise stops when those urban ills come too close to their neighborhoods. Voters sense that phoniness– and they don’t find it cool.

One visible sign of these new times is how Trump voters are no longer hiding like they used to. It is the other side that is on the defensive. Trump may be as crass and bombastic as ever, but he now has a net-positive favorability rating for the first time since he entered politics. His followers are showing the chutzpah of rebels who just conquered the bourgeoisie and are taking back their country. And yes, they might as well say it: It’s cool again to love America.

Conservatives, of course, shouldn’t get too cocky or celebrate too early. There are enough unattractive aspects of their movement– things like authoritarian instincts, an impulsive leader and big-money interests– that can unravel that edifice. Staying cool is as hard as becoming cool.

Democrats, meanwhile, will continue their conservative-bashing on college campuses and elsewhere. It just won’t look as cool as it used to.