Will 2024 be the year that DEI, climate craziness and open border policies start to lose their mojo?
Welcome to 2024 – the year that Americans will reject the woke and dysfunctional policies of the progressive left. The year in which the pendulum, thank heavens, will continue to swing towards common sense and sanity.
How do we know? Because Joe Biden’s approval ratings are in the gutter and EVs are piling up on dealer lots. Because Taylor Swift breaks every conceivable record performing family-friendly shows while Disney’s woke confections fail to find an audience. Because Claudine Gay is forced to resign from Harvard and the country views the Democratic Party more negatively than at any time during the past three decades.
It’s a start. The silent majority has not gone away; it has simply been asleep.
HARVARD PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY RESIGNS AMID ANTISEMITISM, PLAGIARISM CONTROVERSIES
Reflecting an overdue awakening, some of the most offensive assaults on our nation’s values and protections are being tossed overboard. DEI hiring is down and companies are abandoning race-based programs.
Last year, DEI-related job posts dropped 44% as companies backed off their over-the-top response to the murder of George Floyd and demands from Black Lives Matter protesters. Tech companies like Google and Meta, vanguards of social activism, drastically cut DEI programs and laid off employees engaged in Black employee resource groups, according to CNBC. Charges that DEI programs promoted illegal racial discrimination and shareholder blowback took a toll.
President Biden, a big promoter of DEI, is defending the indefensible and possibly illegal. He recently penned an op-ed in the Washington Post recalling the teachings of Martin Luther King, but equality-embracing King would be appalled – as are millions of Americans -- by the racist policies of the Biden White House. The policies that Biden brags about are probably unconstitutional, like awarding "a record $69.9 billion in federal contracts to small, disadvantaged businesses in fiscal 2022," meaning mostly Black-owned. Dr. King advocated equal opportunity and racial blindness, not stacking the deck in a cynical play for votes.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION PROGRAMS TOOK A HIT IN 2023
Elsewhere, investors are boycotting ESG funds, realizing that extreme social ideology and virtue signaling are not the best way to make money. CNN writes: "ESG Investing is Dying on Wall Street," and that the flow of ESG funds has been "flat to slightly negative since the first quarter of 2022," while ESG assets under management actually declined last year. Poor returns and the threat of legal action on behalf of beneficiaries who had not approved of their investments being used to make a political statement have undermined what until recently was a roaring industry.
It’s not just the leftist programs that are coming under fire – the messengers are also facing push back. Many progressives have revealed themselves as virulently antisemitic; how can they honestly advocate for racial or gender equity while attacking Jews?
WHAT IS ESG? INVESTING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL AND GOVERNANCE IN MIND
Other signs that Americans are abandoning the left include disenchantment with Biden’s climate mandates. Half the country thinks Biden is taking us in the wrong direction with his climate zealotry, according to Pew, while only 45% believe he’s doing the right thing.
As costs soar and choices narrow (even if you like your gas stove you may not be able to keep it), consumers will get even more negative.
The climate industrial complex is gradually being revealed – not as a hoax – but a wrong-headed and ill-devised series of programs that hurt our country by eliminating one of our greatest advantages, cheap and abundant energy. As Americans struggle to pay electric bills that are 24% higher than when Biden took office, they will reject the forced transition to all-electric.
BIDEN ALLIES TURN AGAINST KEY PART OF HIS CLIMATE AGENDA
The extreme liberal bias in our schools has emerged as yet another battleground, with Ivy leaders having to defend their towers for the first time in our memory. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay is not just a token hire but a token of everything that is wrong with our education system: insulated, hypocritical and arrogant. Finally, she has resigned, sparing the university, which foolishly gave her an apparently undeserved opportunity, even more embarrassment.
In their end-of-year review, the commentators at The Economist note that even the research supportive of progressive thought in 2023 took it on the chin. Thomas Picketty, who claimed that inequality in our country has risen to unparalleled heights and laid the groundwork for massive income redistribution, was shown to be factually wrong. New studies show that the gulf between rich and poor in the U.S. is hugely mitigated by transfer payments and taxation, obliterating arguments for even more progressive taxation.
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Meanwhile, the idiotic idea that putting criminals back on the street would make our cities safer is being rightly tossed aside as urban neighborhoods become more dangerous. Several progressive cities that cut cops (Minneapolis, Washington, Los Angeles, Austin) and "reimagined" public safety have reversed course.
In Oakland last year, the Black advocacy group NAACP called for residents to drop its Defund the Police movement, saying the efforts led to a "heyday" for criminals.
In November, Gallup found that 58% of Americans think the U.S. criminal justice system is not tough enough in its handling of crime; that represents a major turnaround from 2020, when only 41% thought law enforcement too lax.
Biden’s greatest offense against U.S. citizens has been allowing millions of people – over 300,000 in December alone -- to enter the country illegally over our southern border. Those migrants are given a court date to appear several years in the future and will inevitably disappear into the shadows.
This dereliction of duty is a menace to all Americans, resulting in tens of thousands of fentanyl deaths, widespread human trafficking, terror threats and other dangerous outcomes. Even more tragic, this crisis has turned many Americans against immigration, and raised it to the second most important issue for voters, right behind inflation.
Americans are wising up. How they will vent their frustration with the great progressive tilt of the Democratic Party and with Joe Biden remains to be seen. The polls promise a well-deserved shellacking.