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In recent weeks, a controversy has popped up pitting the centrist #Resistance and progressive wings of the Democratic party against each other. This iteration of what has become a common battle regards a rising star of the establishment Democratic partyKamala Harris, junior senator from California. Although the recent debate on Harris is relatively new, sparked by an article from The Week by Ryan Cooper titled Why Leftists Dont Trust Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick, its only the newest incarnation of a toxic dynamic that has been in full swing since 2016, where the two sides do battle over whether leftist critique of certain politicians is proof that the critics are racist, misogynist, or both. No matter how specific and policy-oriented the lefts critiques are, a certain class of liberals will never let the debate be about policy. This piece is an attempt to explain their tactics, and outline a strategy for overcoming them.

Typically, there are five steps to the centrist smear.

Step One: Define the Enemy as a White Male, Erase All Others

First, the leftists making the critiques are depicted by liberals as being almost exclusively white, male, and (often) privileged. The most popular method for carrying this out is the coining and weaponizing of the term Bernie Bros. Sometimes (white) female Bernie supporters are begrudgingly acknowledged, only to be dismissed as traitors suffering from internalized misogyny, or as flighty young singles supporting Sanders because thats where the boys areas Gloria Steinem, among others, claimed. Leftists of color, however, are rarely acknowledged even begrudgingly, and are often ignored outright in an act of erasure.

Step Two: Define the Leftist Motivation as Racist/Misogynist/Etc.

The second tactic of centrist liberals is to portray these supposedly exclusively white, male leftists as being solely motivated by misogyny and racism in their criticisms of women and minority politicians. They tend to do this by ignoring, minimizing or outright dismissing any policy criticisms leveled against these politicians, and by claiming that these female and or minority politicians are being held to a higher standard of purity testing than their white, male counterparts.

Step Three: Present Identity Politics and Class Politics as a Zero-Sum Game

Step three from the centrist playbook is to maintain that identity politics are being thrown under the bus in favor of class-only politicsregardless of the substantive policy and character critiques put forth. Many #Resistance-style liberals have a very narrow definition of good identity politics that only allows for superficial diversity in the form of representation optics. For example, a board of directors of a corporation may exploit its black workers and run abusive third-world sweatshops and practice environmental racism, but as long as that board has a proportionate number of women and minorities, the liberal idea of identity politics is usually satisfied. Therefore, even if the critique against a minority or woman candidate is for an action that disproportionately targeted black peopleexpanding the prison-industrial complex by locking up black men at an increased rate, for examplecentrists perpetually claim that the greater crime to the marginalized group is the fact that anyone dares to criticize a politician from that group. Even when that minority candidate is being criticized for a policy that hurts minorities and women, the lie must be maintainedcriticism of that politician is criticism of the group, and identity politics in all its forms.

Step Four: Attack the Delivery of the Message, Not the Message Itself

Step four is simple tone policingdivert the topic to civility of the discourse, shifting the focus to how the critic delivered her criticism, rather than the substantive merit of said criticism. This leads directly to smarm and virtue signalinga pattern that repeatedly occurred in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, and is happening again with Kamala Harris. In both cases, liberals press the idea that criticisms only ever come from privileged white men, are too rude and abusive to ever be constructive, and only ever stem from racism and sexismusually in the form of a total dismissal of all identity politics and a contempt for the oppressed identities theyre meant to protect. Critics of these politicians are never acknowledged as having legitimate concerns on policy and character.

Step Five: Personality, Not Policy

The fifth and final step for the neoliberals is to make the political debate a matter of charismatic personalities, or names. This is why we see so many pieces lamenting that Kamala Harris has a Bernieland problem, or is struggling with Bernie Sanderssupporters, despite the fact that neither Bernie Sanders or anyone in his inner circle are actually behind any of the Harris public criticisms, and most of these leftists havent brought up Sanders at all in their critiques. (Some centrists, such as Laurence Tribe, have gone so far as to accuse Sanders of masterminding the attacks, in the absence of all evidence.) These pieces often refuse to call the critics leftists or progressives, because that would give a clearer idea of policy beliefs and ideals.

On Aug. 8, when The Week published the aforementioned Ryan Cooper article, and every day since, all of these dynamics have been in the media. Cooper responded to accusations that the left is motivated by racism and misogyny in its distrust of Harris by citing her history as a prosecutor, her defense of questionable Wall Street fat cats like Bain Capital, and her closeness to the donor class. However, although a few responses did try to sincerely engage Coopers arguments, most simply evaded them altogether in favor of doubling down on accusations of racism, sexism, and the false claim that these critics refused to hold white politicians to the same standards.

How to Fight It

My personal belief is that liberals always want to pivot away from substantive policy to diversity, double standards, civility, privilege and personalities because theyre actually afraid of defending their heroes on a policy levelthough not always for the same reasons. Some of these liberals wont defend the problematic policies and connections of a Harris, Booker, or Patrick because they dont find them problematic. In fact, they outright support them, and dont want to openly say so. Others cant defend the problematic policies and connections of a Harris, Booker, or Patrick because they dont actually know enough about the policies and connections of their faves to defend them on that leveleven if they were inclined to try. They only engage with them on the level of fans and celebrities.

And its precisely because they cant argue politics on a policy level that they always want to get leftists to discuss the criteria that matter to thembourgeois feminism, superficial diversity, civility, and incrementalism. Since they can only critique on those standards, they try to force others into defending on the same standards, and shift the entire discourse. When you know you cant win the debate on policy grounds, there are some definite advantages to using this alternate strategy instead.

First, by constantly returning the focus to identity politics, the hope is to get leftists to respond on the same grounds, which subtly reinforces their premise that these are the things politics should be about. Therefore, even if you as a leftist are responding just to say no, were not white racists silencing people of color and women and no, were not uncivil, youre validating their premise that those are the most important issues at stake simply by defending yourself. Suddenly, youre on trial, and the politicians in questionalong with their policies and political connectionsare secondary. But if a leftist refuses to answer at all, she will appear to be tacitly admitting to racism, misogyny, and other forms of toxicity. Its the classic loaded question gambit gambit: Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?

Thats why the best response is to always pivot back to policy, even when choosing to answering the identity politics accusations. If, as a leftist, you choose to defend the lefts track record on race, be sure to include policies you support that help oppressed identities, and contrast them with centrist policies that hurt those same people. Whenever liberals get roped into policy discussions, they usually end up defending fallacious arguments that are easy to pick apart. Often, liberals will end up in ludicrous positionsbadmouthing single payer, defending Hillarys Arkansas slave labor, defending the Clinton crime bill, etc.

Thats why Coopers article was so effective and triggered so much defensiveness: it moved them out of their comfort zone and onto their opponents field of battle. Pivoting back to superficial identity politics, civilities, and litigating popular personalities is their attempt to regain home court advantage. In response to claims that the left dislikes Harris because shes black and female, Cooper responded with pure policy, rather than just saying, hey, we do like women and people of color, and here are examples of some who rock with uswhich is exactly the response they want. If you go that route, theyll ignore you anyway, and will view it as validation of the idea that politics is just a head count of tokens.

Even if you do respond with policy, note that a liberals only defense is to revert to superficial identity politics, which is why you have to remain vigilant and stick to policy no matter how often they force the pivot. Its not that identity politics and feminism dont matter; its just that theyre using these topics as shields, and no matter how much you accept and respond to their framing, theyll ignore the answer anyway. Furthermore, the superficial way they frame feminism and identity politics isnt particularly helpful to women and minorities anyway. Its optics and incrementalismutterly bourgeois in its concerns and solutions.

I feel liberals ignore policy concerns that people like Ryan Cooper, Briahna Joy Gray, and Zoe Samudzi bring up because either they fully support said crappy policies and know saying so looks bad, or because they arent engaged on policies at all, couldnt defend them intellectually even if they wanted to, and may not even know what they are.

Oh, and dont forget personalities. They also want to keep topic on personalities (Hillary, Kamala, Bernie, certain leftist podcasters, pundits, and writers) and not on systems and the needs of voters. They get hung up on people, and not ideas. That way they can dwell on things like Bernie Sandersthe person, his wifes legal case, and the cost of his house, and not on socialism and its growing appeal with the populace, especially young people. If this sounds like a Republican smear tactic, thats no accidenta continued focus on policy is kryptonite to liberals, whose only recourse is to act, and sound, just like conservatives.

T. Beaulieu is the host of the Champagne Sharks podcast. You can also find him on Twitter @rickyrawls.

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The Centrist Smear: The Five Steps Liberals Take to Undermine Leftist Critique - Paste Magazine