Adult Conversations

If liberals want to win they have to change the way they speak to each other.

by Ben Cohen

When you are siloed into one of America’s political echo chambers, it becomes extremely difficult to have adult conversations. This is particularly true in liberal circles and it is one of the major reasons Trump won in 2024.

Let’s say you are a Obama/Clinton/Harris voter with liberal views on everything other than abortion. Perhaps you were raised in a Christian or Muslim household and sincerely believe life begins at conception. Do you tell your Kamala Harris supporting friends that you are pro-life, or do you keep quiet for fear of being ostracized?

This is the position many on the left have found themselves in, and it quietly drove many of them towards Donald Trump. I know this because I have several friends who voted for Trump because they felt they could not express themselves honestly with their liberal friends. So they protested by voting for Donald Trump. I tried desperately to talk them around but the message was the same: liberals are judgmental assholes so they would be voting for the philandering criminal just to show them.

I don’t agree with their decisions, but I do understand it — at least to a certain degree. We have lost countless subscribers to The Banter over things I’ve written, and I live in a neighborhood where not having an LGBTQ/Free Palestine flag on your house is tantamount to being a white supremacist. I try to see the humorous side of this and don’t let it effect my views on Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. I don’t believe the solution to self-righteous liberals is a raging fascist with the impulse control of a toddler.

However, judging by the enormous shift amongst pretty much every demographic in the country towards Trump, this is a reality the left needs to come to terms with. When people feel judged, they resent it and can act out of anger. I’m sure a similar dynamic plays out on the right, but as a fully paid member of the DNC/Deep State/Hillary Clinton cabal, I am less familiar with it.

So what to do?

The first step is for liberals to speak out about this regardless of the cost. I’m publishing this knowing it will probably go down badly with a lot of people. I’ll get accused of pandering to Trump, participating in ‘woke hysteria’, blaming Democrats for everything, and being a traitor to my own side etc, etc. We’ll lose memberships and our traffic will take a hit. But the culture on the left has to change and I will do my small part in trying to make that happen.

The second step is to have adult conversations about difficult topics. And by ‘adult’ I mean ‘nuanced’. This means addressing issues like immigration and gender and acknowledging that it is ok to have different views on it without being called a racist or a transphobe.

I have a nuanced take on gender and identity for example, but often worry about saying anything for fear of backlash. Is it ok for me to say that I think transgenderism is real, that kids can be trans, but men cannot actually become biological women and vice versa? Is it ok to express concerns about gender affirming surgery or hormone treatment for people under the age of 18 while believing trans kids need to be supported and protected?

I am very pro immigration (I am an immigrant after all) but I also recognize there are real problems with the system and how some cultures aren’t integrating well into American life. How do we talk about this without being labeled a xenophobe?

To be clear, I don’t blame the left for all of this. The right has been so disgusting on these issues that I understand why liberals are so sensitive about them. It is the main reason why I haven’t waded into the trans debate. I find the right’s targeting of trans people so abhorrent and so dangerous that I don’t want to add any fuel to the fire. But it is an issue that still needs to be talked about — particularly given the consequences of irreversible surgery and extreme hormone treatment.

This means the left cannot allow the right to dictate how we talk about these topics because the more it self-censors, the more the right wins. Rather than confront the issues, Democrats simply chose not talk about immigration or gender identity politics during the election. This turned out to be a very serious mistake and allowed Trump to paint the party as radically out of touch with every day Americans.

The truth is, most liberals have nuanced perspectives and are open to debate these issues. They aren’t out of touch with the rest of the country and they desperately want to have adult conversations. But they are so afraid of being called out by the ideologues that they stay quiet.

In 2025, the left has a huge opportunity to reinvent itself - but only if it chooses honest dialogue over ideological comfort.

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